Information spread on the Internet that a teenager was detained in Tomsk for sending fake news to bloggers and the media under the guise of a source from the Kremlin. We decided to check if this is true.
ABOUT detention “young swindler” in early April 2023 wrote some are not the most authoritative news portals. News with quotes from the detainee, where he admits that every week he came up with fake news and sent them to various publications, separated V blogs, on entertainment forums and in social networks. It was reposted by many Telegram channels, for example “Pavel Onishchenko"(22,000 views at the time of writing), "Optimist in civilian clothes" (17,000), "Grandma knows everything!"(7000), etc.
We were unable to find news about the detention of a Tomsk resident on official portals Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Tomsk region, Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation or RF IC for the Tomsk region, where news about high-profile arrests is usually published.
The news is disseminated with an illustration in the form of a screenshot from operational filming of the interrogation of a detainee with a blurred face. The photo shows the logo of the Rossiya Vyatka TV channel, where, presumably, a story about this news was shown. It is not entirely clear why the regional television channel of the Kirov region suddenly became so interested in the news about the detention of a Tomsk resident. Moreover, if you look at any plot this TV channel, you can see that its logo now looks completely different. Such logo, as in the illustration for the post, was on the Rossiya TV channel from 2002 to 2008. By searching the photo, it was not possible to establish the original source of this image, but most likely, this is indeed a fragment of operational footage shown on “Russia” at that time.
The news text (almost identical in all sources) says the following: a teenager told Meduza that the Tomsk governor drained gasoline from an ambulance, and journalists published it. However, find on publication website such news failed. The Tomsk resident also allegedly sent blogger Anatoly Shariy the news that Shoigu predicted the victory of Ukraine, and even received 3,000 rubles for it. It was not possible to find such news in Sharia’s Telegram channel. In addition, blogger commented news about a detained insider, wondering where and when he wrote about Shoigu’s prediction or referred to “our source in the Kremlin.”
Earliest publication The news that “Verified” was able to discover was made on April 6, 2023 in the Telegram channel “but my Yandex wallet,” which specializes in satirical news and openly states this in its description. In addition, a day later the same channel published fast that some channels with millions of viewers “stole” this news and then blocked the authors of the original post. At the same time, those who reposted the message probably took it at face value and presented it to their subscribers in the same way.
This is not the first time that Internet users, bloggers and even the media buy into fictitious news published in the “but my Yandex wallet” channel. Previously, “Verified” already analyzed stories that Polish Prime Minister proposed Zelensky to transfer the western territories of Ukraine to Poland, which Ukrainian writer wanted to oblige fellow citizens who support Russia to wear a red star on their clothes, or that an official representative of the White House Karine Jean-Pierre called the transition of Brazil and China to mutual settlements in national currencies a violation of the rights of Americans to a stable dollar exchange rate. All of them turned out to be completely fictitious.
Thus, there is not a single evidence that a certain minor resident of Tomsk actually spread fake news under the guise of a source from the Kremlin and was detained for this. Initially, the news appeared in a Telegram channel specializing in made-up news, and from there it spread across the Internet under the guise of truth.
Cover photo: Telegram channel "and here is my Yandex wallet»
Satirical news
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