Is it true that Russian missiles destroyed a secret NATO bunker in the Lviv region of Ukraine?

Since mid-March 2023, many Russian media have reported various details about the destruction of a bunker in western Ukraine by supersonic Kinzhal missiles. According to various sources cited by publications, from 200 to 300 generals and officers of the “NATO shadow general staff” were killed. We decided to check how accurate this information is.

Many Russian media wrote about the destruction of the secret underground headquarters: Komsomolskaya Pravda published the news March 30, and April 14 released article military observer of the publication with the assertion that it is because of this attack that the Ukrainian counter-offensive is being postponed. They also wrote about this “MK", Lenta.ru, "Gazeta.ru» And "Constantinople"

March 9, 2023 Russian Ministry of Defense reported about the “strike of retaliation.” It was about revenge for penetration to the Bryansk region of the Ukrainian detachment. Official Kyiv named this incident was a “classic provocation”, and responsibility The raid was taken over by the Russian Volunteer Corps, a unit consisting of Russian citizens fighting on the side of Ukraine. IN message The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation stated the following: “High-precision long-range air, sea and ground-based weapons, including the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system, damaged key elements of Ukraine’s military infrastructure, enterprises of the military-industrial complex, as well as the energy facilities that support them. The target of the strike has been achieved. All designated targets have been hit." No other details of this attack were received from the military department at the time of publication of this analysis.

The Ukrainian authorities, in turn, spoke about the missiles themselves and the damage they caused. According to the official representative of the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Yuri Ignat, Russia launched six Kinzhals. One of the missiles actually hit a target in the western part of Ukraine - but not a “secret NATO bunker,” but several private residential buildings in the Zolochevsky district of the Lviv region. About this reported head of the regional administration Maxim Kozitsky. Five people died.

On March 10, a message about the alleged destruction of the “NATO shadow headquarters” began to spread through Russian Telegram channels. The site’s channel was the first to write about this in detail.Pravda.ru", referring to the "military experts" of the WarFiles website.

There is one on the website warfiles.ru article, but the link to the full text of the note leads to the site “Free press" The sources indicated in the article are unnamed Ukrainian public pages. As follows from the statistics of the TGStat service, there were no such posts on Telegram before March 10. There are no similar posts on Twitter until March 10.

On March 12, a link to article, published March 9 on The Intel Drop website. The author of the article, identified as “Cossack Colonel Yuri Kominienko,” reports that the Kinzhal missile allegedly hit a bunker hidden at a depth of 80 meters. This bunker, the article says, was used to coordinate air defense systems. The author writes that up to 300 people died, 40 of them were high-ranking specialists. There are no sources in the article. Other publications on this site include articles with pro-Russian and pro-Iranian content, historical notes (for example, under the title “After the war, Eisenhower killed about a million German soldiers") and investigations disseminating conspiracy theories.

March 30 in Russian media appeared new source: publication on the “Greek portal of political and military information” Pronews. "MK" indicatedthat the Greek site refers to its American sources. However, in the text itself publications the only source of information about the alleged attack on the bunker and about numerous casualties is the phrase “the Russians (оι Ρώσοι) say that.”

Fact-checking site Snopes found the earliest mention of a strike on a "NATO bunker". The article by the same “Cossack Colonel Yuri Kominienko” appeared on March 1, 2023 on the Australian website Cairns News. It was this publication that was completely reprinted by The Intel Drop. But it is important that it appeared eight days before the Russian army launched a Kinzhal attack on the Lviv region.

First mention of a “Cossack colonel” appeared on Australian site April 27, 2022. The publication's journalist wrote that he managed to communicate via video through a translator with a person located near Kiev. At that time, the “Cossack colonel” (in the first article he is called Yuri Komienko) talked about underground biological laboratories in Ukraine and about soldiers of the French Foreign Legion hiding in the basements of Azovstal.

After this, the Australian website began regularly publishing articles by the “Cossack colonel.” In June 2022, for example, told about a missile strike that killed up to 50 senior military personnel from Ukraine and NATO countries, as well as about American satellites disabled in space by Russian troops.

Facial recognition site PimEyes definesthat the interlocutor of the Australian site is a resident of Sakhalin, Yuri Kornienko. His photo appeared in articles in regional media devoted to meetings between government officials and the public. At one of these meetings, Kornienko called himself foreman and representative of the local Cossacks.

This man has a scandalous reputation on Sakhalin. In May 2022 Kornienko went out to picket demanding the governor's resignation. He introduced himself to journalists as the chairman of the Council of Atamans of Sakhalin and said that the governor won thanks to the support of the Cossacks - allegedly Kornienko personally brought 70,000 people to the elections. In December of the same year got through on the phone aired on the state television channel OTV Sakhalin and complained that they were not helping veterans of military operations on the territory of Ukraine. Kornienko said then that he was wounded near Severodonetsk, and has now returned home. However, the Sakhalin Cossacks renounced their comrade: the real ataman of the Pacific Cossack society in an interview with MK named Kornienko is an impostor. From the Kornienko Society excluded in January 2022, there were also doubts that he participated in the fighting at all.

Thus, Russian media reports about the destruction of the “secret NATO bunker” near Lvov are not based on any reliable information. Initially, this was told to an Australian website by a man with a dubious reputation, who introduced himself as a Cossack colonel and broadcast the most popular fakes about the war with Ukraine. The publications had no other sources. Neither the Russian, nor the Ukrainian, nor the NATO command officially reported on the destruction of the bunker or its existence in general.

Cover photo: kremlin.ru

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Is it true that the Ukrainian army used the synagogue in Uman for military purposes?
2. Is it true that the shopping center in Kremenchug was closed several months before the missile attack?
3. Is it true that on October 17, a Ukrainian air defense missile, and not a drone, fell on a residential building in Kyiv?