At the end of March 2023, reports appeared in the Ukrainian media about the sale of Ukrainian black soil in the Russian capital. A screenshot from the shopping center website was attached as proof. We decided to check if this is true.

Ukrainian media wrote about the sale of “fertile Ukrainian black soil” in Moscow on March 29, as soon as a screenshot from the website of the Yuzhny shopping center in Moscow began to spread across the Internet. For example, it was reported “RBC-Ukraїon», "Focus" And Informator. They also wrote about this on social networks: in particular, he published the news in his Telegram channel Advisor to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko.

The only evidence of the sale of Ukrainian black soil in Moscow is still the same screenshot from the website of the Yuzhny shopping center.

March 29 on the shopping center website and it’s true appeared such an ad remains in the web archive. Perhaps the image that has become popular is a screenshot of the mobile version of the ad (it differs from the desktop version in that the title is aligned to the left and has a different font).

On the same day, the ad was removed, and on the shopping center website posted another message. The shopping center administration stated that the site had been hacked.

Judging by the fact that the font and design of the two publications largely coincide, it can be assumed that either the site was actually hacked and unauthorized people got into the internal administration system, or one of the employees posted an advertisement for the sale of black soil.

The hypothesis that the shopping center actually sold black soil and the ad was removed after the scandal is unlikely. Firstly, the ad was removed on the day of publication, even before the scandal gained momentum. Secondly, it was not possible to find other advertisements for the sale of Ukrainian black soil in Moscow or other large Russian cities. Thirdly, in this section The website of the Yuzhny shopping center had previously contained no news about the sale of any specific product. The latest messages are dedicated to the opening of new cafes, shops and entertainment spaces, as well as the stages of construction of the shopping center.

The structure of this section allows you to find traces of another hack. There are only six news items in the section, and at the end of the address of the hacking message the number 462 is indicated. If you type consecutive numbers in the address bar, you can find another strange thing in the Internet Archive message, dedicated to the supposedly started sales of “Wagner’s hammer”, and not in the Yuzhny shopping center, but in the unrelated retail chains Metro, Auchan and Leroy Merlin. It was posted on the website of the Yuzhny shopping center in early December, then it was deleted, but a copy of the page was preserved in the web archive.

This post once again proves that someone had access to the management of the site, and for many months. After the first hack, the message was simply deleted, which did not prevent unknown people from subsequently performing the same operation. Interestingly, the message about “Wagner’s Hammer” can be discover on the website of another shopping center - in Perm. And there, too, it was clearly not authorized by the store administration and has now been deleted.

Thus, there are no other traces of the organized sale of Ukrainian black soil, except for one advertisement on the website, which disappeared on the same day. Therefore, today the news about the start of sales of Ukrainian black soil in Russian shopping centers does not correspond to reality.

Cover photo: screenshot “Verified”