A screenshot of a post on one of the Ukrainian forums went viral on the Internet. It shows a message from a Ukrainian woman whose husband returned from captivity, where he received a blood transfusion. Now the girl is allegedly thinking about divorce because her husband changed because of the “blood of Muscovites.” We have verified this story.
Publications with a viral screenshot appeared at the end of February 2023. The image that went viral shows a Ukrainian-language post entitled “Divorce during the war”, the author of which is a person under the nickname SectetlyYours. The story is translated into Russian as follows: “I don’t know what to do. My husband returned from captivity at the beginning of the month. He was treated there and given a blood transfusion. It turns out that he now has the blood of Muscovites in him? It’s as if one person went to war, and another returned. How about a divorce? I can’t communicate with him like before.” Often there is a second screenshot, which shows comments from both other forum users (“Get tested for AIDS”, “Get a divorce”, “You need to support your husband, but 100% don’t have any more children”), and the author of the post (“Pray for his soul”).
According to the service TGStat, since February 26, at the time of this writing, more than 600 entries have appeared on Telegram retelling the story from the screenshot - their total reach was almost 4 million views. Some of the most popular channels that posted the viral image included “Russia now"(377,000 views), "Scott Ritter on Telegram"(233,000), "🔥 Army 🅉 18+ 🔥"(204,000), Voblya (190,000), "Ukraine.ru"(187,000), "Uncle Slava"(155,000), ""Special Operation Z" | Yuri Podolyaka+"(123,000), "Ivan Utenkov"(120,000), "Khazin"(115,000), "Russia 2.0" (69,000) and "Sexton"(64,000). At the same time, on VKontakte appeared almost 300 such posts, for example, in the organization’s verified public page “Safe Internet League"and also here, here, here And here. You can find a screenshot or a retelling of the story from it in Twitter, LiveJournal and on some news resources, including the newspaper website “Arguments and facts" Separately, I would like to highlight the comment from “Zen”, where the author of the post with a screenshot wrote: “Here’s the story. No science fiction writer would come up with something like this on purpose. I wouldn’t believe it, but you can’t argue with the picture.”
The viral screenshot shows the Ukrainian website “Kidstaff advisor", which positions itself as “the most visited women’s forum in Ukraine,” where they write about “frank topics that excite women’s souls and minds.” According to search, there is no publication on this resource entitled “Divorce during the war.” There are similar ones, but they are all from other authors and published on different dates.
But the user under the nickname SectetlyYours is really on the forum available, it has been registered there since 2021. "Verified" looked at this person's profile and found a post, published February 21 at 19:16 - this is the date and time indicated on the viral screenshot. The number of comments left also coincided. However, this SectetlyYours publication is in Russian, it has a different title (“Life sucks - if you don’t have a cool guy nearby”) and text. In addition, the author writes about himself in the masculine gender.
We also compared the comments under this post with those shown in the second viral screenshot. Their content is different, but other data and details are the same: the time of commenting, user nicknames and devices from which they wrote, the number of likes and even the order in which these comments were posted.
February 28 SectetlyYours posted in my account a new post entitled “Russian fakes”. According to the author, someone took his other publication, changed its content and title, wrote “utter nonsense,” and then passed it all off as “a cry for help from a Ukrainian woman.”
Of all the publications we reviewed with fake screenshots, the earliest appeared February 26 at 13:25 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Rita Ebzeeva” (75,000 views). “Verified” has already written that this channel not only repeatedly disseminated false information about Ukraine and her support Western countries, but also at least once was becoming the primary source of such a fake.
In addition, the theme of the purebredness of Ukrainians was used in other unreliable reports. Thus, in October 2022, “Verified” reviewed publications about announcement Kyiv clinic allegedly accepting biomaterials “only from purebred Ukrainians who have no relatives in Russia.” In March 2023, posts appeared with poster Ukrainian laboratory, where they allegedly accept donor blood only from purebred Ukrainians. In both cases, we found no evidence to support their authenticity.
Thus, the message about a girl from Ukraine who was thinking about divorce because of the “blood of Muscovites” that got into her husband during a transfusion is nothing more than an ordinary propaganda fake. The screenshots presented as evidence were faked in a graphics editor or by changing the site page code.
Cover photo: social networks
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