Continuous cycle factory: what fakes about Ukraine appeared in 2023

Biden is an old man with dementia. Ukrainians are either Nazis or fraternal people suffering from the decisions of their own government. Western media are hypocritical liars. Europeans secretly support the Kremlin and understand the goals of the North Military District, but are afraid to say it out loud.

Russian propaganda used all these narratives in the second year of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, using already tested methods: distributed fake covers of foreign satirical media, following Trump supporters published edited videos against the current US President, brought made-up quotes from European politicians. However, in 2023, the arsenal of disinformers was replenished with new techniques, thanks to which the fake factory was able to offer the audience both confirmation of the theses already expressed and fresh knowledge.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are losing hundreds of thousands of dead and recruiting old people, gays and foreign homeless people to the front.

Throughout the year, “shocking revelations” about the real losses of the Ukrainian army in the war against the Russian Federation regularly appeared in Russian Telegram channels. For example, in mid-May, it spread across social networks video, allegedly created by the Ukrainian Football Association, residents of the country were invited to attend matches in memory of the 300,000 compatriots who died at the front. At the end of August, pro-Russian media already wrote about 400,000 killed, “let it slip” on social networks by the Ukrainian mobile operator “Kyivstar”, and just two weeks later the real scale of Ukrainian losses, as claimed revealed a French travel agency that launched an action in memory of the 500,000 killed soldiers and officers. Finally, in November, secret data allegedly revealed Ukrainian TV channel “1 + 1”, where data on more than 1.1 million dead and missing appeared in the news ticker. All four messages turned out to be fakes - in the first three cases, the videos were created from scratch by the disinformers themselves, and in a fragment of a television broadcast they simply replaced the news in the ticker. Official Kyiv did not disclose its losses during the year; Western media with link on Pentagon officials evaluate the number of Ukrainian military deaths since February 2022 is 70 thousand.

Another way to convince the audience of Z-channels and simply pro-government resources that there is about to be not a single living and healthy fighter left in the Armed Forces of Ukraine is to publish numerous messages about the mobilization of ever new categories of citizens, which Kyiv is allegedly carrying out. For example, a video was distributed on Telegram about how gamers were being recruited into the Ukrainian army (under the slogan “You are no longer a child, the games are over”) and gays (with the words “It doesn’t matter whether you love women or men, the main thing is that you love Ukraine”). The first video was mounted from an advertisement for a computer mouse posted on YouTube, footage from several video games and recordings from a combat zone, the second is a clip from a Polish television report from three years ago and an advertisement for the Ukrainian Ground Forces, filmed back in 2016. Both first appeared in pro-Russian Telegram channels.

Pro-government media illustrated the same thesis with photographs of leaflets and brochures allegedly distributed both in Ukraine and abroad. So, to the front, they say on social networks, they invited Kyiv pensioners, New York homeless And Washington students. The evidence consisted of photographs taken in such a way that it was impossible to establish the location of the shooting. In less than two years of a full-scale war, fact checkers have sorted out dozens, if not hundreds of such fakes.

Europeans paint graffiti ridiculing Zelensky

Back in November 2022, Tsargrad, Vladimir Solovyov’s channel and other media spread the news that a group of anonymous artists known as Typical Optical, drew on the sidewalk in the center of Warsaw there is 3D graffiti - the President of Ukraine crawling out from under the asphalt, eating money. True, for some reason their work was not posted by any of the thousands of citizens who regularly pass through this busy intersection, the existence of graffiti was denied by local media and municipal services, and professional artists stated that it was in principle impossible to create such an image quickly and unnoticeably. Over the following months, reports of the appearance of similar drawings came from various European cities: Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Berlin, London, The Hague. Artists depicted the Ukrainian president as a black hole, locust or octopus devouring money and military equipment, as well as a pimple and feces.

But there were a few oddities in Typical Optical's work. First, thanks to Google Street View panoramas, it became clear that at least some of the graffiti was painted in cities other than those mentioned in the captions to the group’s social media posts. Secondly, some works were created literally at one intersection in Paris, but one of them was passed off as being located in Brussels. Thirdly, when the artists painted graffiti in Zurich, which was allegedly placed in Berlin, they were remembered by a chestnut seller standing nearby - according to him, the young people did nothing at all. Taken together with other signs, we can conclude that some young men in black jackets with hoods simply took pictures while squatting in different cities of Europe, and then, using a photo editor, added graffiti to the pictures, passing them off as real.

By June 2023, Typical Optical's activity had faded, but reports of graffiti in European cities, whose residents allegedly criticized and ridiculed Zelensky, did not stop appearing. For example, in September spread photographs of murals allegedly taken in Berlin and Paris - in them, a politician eats body parts in a military uniform with a patch in the form of the Ukrainian flag. As it turned out, the pictures with the first graffiti actually show Warsaw, and the second one shows an intersection next to the one where two works by Polish artists were previously made. Judging by the available evidence, evidence of the existence of such murals is created in the same way - they take a photograph in one of the European cities, and then use special programs to superimpose the image.

Zelenskaya is a citizen of Israel and Russia who spends millions on jewelry

This year, the creators of fakes began to pay more attention to the first lady of Ukraine. Still at the end of 2022 appeared unconfirmed information that Elena Zelenskaya spent €40,000 in local boutiques during a visit to Paris. Similar allegations began to spread on social networks in October, when the Ukrainian president arrived in New York to participate in a meeting of the UN General Assembly - allegedly his wife at that time bought $1 million worth of jewelry from a Cartier boutique.

Russian media and Telegram channels referred in their publications to a note on the Nigerian website The Nation, where it appeared as a guest text paid for by an unknown customer. The material was based on a video with a certain girl who claimed that she worked in a jewelry store in New York and served Zelenskaya. However, as it turned out, the video wrote it down a native of Cameroon living in St. Petersburg.

The first lady of Ukraine was also accused of having received citizenship of another country. In June, a photo of an Israeli passport that Zelenskaya allegedly received during a visit to this country appeared on social networks. How installed fact checkers and the creators of the fake downloaded a sample passport from the Internet (and an outdated one), replaced the content of several columns (of course, making mistakes in the words in Hebrew) and inserted a fragment of Zelenskaya’s portrait from her social networks. Three months later, a video appeared on the Internet with the Russian passport of the wife of the Ukrainian president - however, in the document allegedly issued in 2014 there was used the photo was taken nine years later, and the machine-readable line on the main page had a lot of errors (from incorrect transliteration to the use of a male gender marker).

Glory to Urine

The autumn trip of the Zelensky couple to the United States became the reason for the appearance of several fakes at once. In particular, allegedly on the day of the Ukrainian delegation’s arrival in New York, a yellow-blue flag with the signature “Glory to Urine” was displayed on one of the media facades in the city center. A video allegedly taken by an eyewitness was used as evidence. “Not fake. <…> Apparently they know something,” signed video in her Telegram channel, official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova. Almost all major pro-government media reported about the embarrassment - from Rossiyskaya Gazeta to Moskovsky Komsomolets.

The video was widely distributed not only in the Russian-language segment of the Internet, so American fact checkers also paid attention to it. Using Google Street View, they determined where the recording was believed to have been made and went to the site. It turned outthat the intersection does not look the same as in the video: advertising screens are placed differently on the facades, and in the building opposite there is a McDonald’s, whose logo is not in the viral video. Apparently, the basis of the fake was one of the numerous (and made several years ago) videos on YouTube, which show a walk through New York in the first person. At least previously using this particular method “Checked” repeatedly caught pro-government Telegram channels, which thus faked videos not only from the USA, but also from Japan.

Some Telegram channels that posted the video cited stories as evidence with an apology for a typo that was allegedly published on Instagram by the company operating the media façade. But, firstly, such stories have never existed, and secondly, the huge screen is controlled by a completely different organization.

Disinformers (and, apparently, their audience) liked the phrase Glory to Urine so much that they began to spread similar fakes. In particular, graffiti with this inscription soon allegedly appeared in different cities of Europe. How established “Verified”, all three drawings were digitally superimposed on photographs taken in the same area of ​​Paris - you can walk around the locations included in the photographs in less than half an hour. It is noteworthy that they are located approximately in the same place where graffiti had previously appeared, showing Zelensky in an unsightly light.

Western stars urge the Ukrainian president to seek treatment for drug addiction

In July, a video with stories allegedly posted on the Instagram account of actor Elijah Wood received millions of views on Telegram. How stated in the video, the Hollywood star urged Zelensky to go to rehab and finally overcome his drug addiction. In subsequent weeks, users shared similar messages from actors Dean Norris (Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad) John K. McGinley (Perry Cox from Scrubs) Malcolm McDowell (Alex from A Clockwork Orange) and Kate Flannery (Meredith Palmer from The Office), boxer Mike Tyson, widow of Elvis Presley Priscilla and bassist of the band System of a Down Shavo Odadjian. Calls for Zelensky to start treatment were broadcast on Channel One, written by RIA Novosti and Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and reported by dozens of pro-Kremlin bloggers.

Although skeptics might think that eight videos were created using a neural network, in fact, as Verified found out, all the videos are genuine - they were ordered using the Cameo service. It allows fans (and, as it turns out, creators of fakes) to contact their idols with a request for a relatively small fee to record a congratulations on a holiday, parting words before an important event, or just a personal greeting. Through Cameo, the organizers of the campaign against Zelensky, apparently, asked the stars to encourage a certain Vladimir (none of the victims of the scam mention the name of the Ukrainian president) to go for treatment. These videos were then designed to look like a series of Instagram stories posted by celebrities. According to our calculations, we spent about $2,000 to order these calls through Cameo.

However, appeared For a long time now, the propaganda narrative about the Ukrainian president’s drug addiction has been confirmed throughout the year in less costly ways. So, in January, a photo of a monument to Zelensky in Milan circulated on social networks: a figure in the shape of a nose and a path made of white powder laid towards it. However, explained the author of the installation, her work has nothing to do with the Ukrainian leader. In the spring, a similar fake was spread - this time, Zelensky was linked to a moving nose exhibited in one of the Parisian galleries, which rides on white powder. In fact, this exhibit presented to the public in Bologna five years earlier, even before the politician was elected president of Ukraine. Finally, a few weeks later, the fake makers returned to Milan again - right next to the Duomo, as they claimed, a stand appeared to raise money to help Ukraine, and the bills were supposed to be lowered into the hole where the nostrils were in the portrait of Zelensky. A video proving the holding of such an action turned out to be mounted.

Ukrainians are not only Nazis, but also infidels

Against the backdrop of worsening in 2022 conflict around the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), numerous evidences of how Ukrainians are betraying the true Christian teachings were spread on the Internet. The main hero of such fakes was the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. For example, in March, the largest Russian media reported that after the first service held on the territory of the monastery by representatives of the OCU, the crosses above the Refectory Church turned black. In fact, how testify photographs from different years, the color of the crosses has not changed for at least two decades.

There were also reports about the sale of valuables from the monastery. For example, in June, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, said that the Ukrainian authorities, through the mediation of UNESCO, agreed with their European colleagues to transfer the relics of saints to their museums. None There is no evidence for this statement; officials in Ukraine and UNESCO denied Naryshkin’s words. Soon, Telegram channels also distributed the announcement of a Paris auction, at which Orthodox shrines from the Kiev Pechersk Lavra would allegedly be sold. The only evidence was a photo of a poster advertising the auction - he turned out to be fake inserted using a photo editor onto a stock image.

Misinformation and stories were spread, likely designed to provoke outrage among true believers. So, in April, a video was circulated in the media and Telegram about how supporters of the OCU set fire to a UOC temple in the Nikolaev region - in fact, a video was removed ten years ago near Astrakhan. Soon it went viral on pro-Kremlin resources fake a screenshot of a publication on the OnlyFans service, in which two Ukrainian webcam models allegedly announced raising money for the needs of the OCU. After Halloween, Telegram channels circulated a video about how this holiday was celebrated in a Ukrainian Orthodox church and during the celebration they sang about Satan, although in reality the video was recorded a month earlier, and the creators of the fake replaced the audio track. Finally, in November, pro-Russian bloggers began to talk about the church of St. dog Patron, using As evidence, two comic videos. 

Europeans are against the transfer of military equipment to Kyiv - and suffer from the decisions of their governments

When the transfer of German Leopard tanks to Ukraine was actively discussed at the turn of 2022 and 2023, several evidence appeared in pro-Russian Telegram channels that ordinary residents of Germany were opposed to this decision. Calls not to send vehicles to the Armed Forces of Ukraine were allegedly posted, in particular, on screen at Stuttgart airport and sign with a request “not to feed the leopards with Zelensky’s empty talk” at the entrance to the Berlin Zoo. The photographs presented as evidence were edited: in the first case, based on an old photograph, in the second, on an Instagram post of one of the zoo visitors.

Already in the summer, the largest pro-government media told about a video supposedly filmed in Germany, according to the plot of which a group of people in uniform comes to the house of a simple German family and takes out all their property (including a stuffed leopard), and the leader of the detachment hangs a portrait of the Ukrainian president on the wall and says: “Heil, Zelensky!” “Is your home in NATO? Make peace with NATO in your home. More than €22 billion from the German budget has already been given to Ukraine since the beginning of 2022,” reads the caption at the end of the story, as some channels claimed, filmed by the right-wing party Alternative for Germany. However, as Radio Liberty journalist Mark Krutov found out, at least several roles in the video were performed by Russian actors, and Verified found a post on the Instagram of one of them stating that the video was created by order of RT.

Another type of weapon called great interest from not only pro-war speakers, but also Russian officials - shells with depleted uranium, which, for example, the UK put at the disposal of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and which, contrary to the Kremlin’s statements with nuclear weapons connects only the name. In mid-May, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said that a Russian missile hitting a warehouse with such ammunition near Khmelnitsky led to the radioactive cloud heading towards Western Europe. A few days earlier, Z-channels published screenshots of services that recorded an increase in radiation levels in western Ukraine and Poland. In both cases the data was correct, but taken out of context. On a weekly horizon, the values ​​were indeed elevated, but in fact they did not go beyond the norm - approximately the same radiation background was in Moscow in those days.

Ukraine sells weapons to Hamas and objects to aid to Israel

On October 7, the day of the attack by Hamas militants on Israel, orientalist and until recently a regular guest on Vladimir Solovyov’s broadcasts, Evgeniy Satanovsky statedthat Hamas, during an attack on border kibbutzim, used weapons that were sold to it by Ukraine. Just two days later with a similar statement spoke Deputy Head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev, and the next day a video allegedly released by the BBC went viral on Telegram channels. It, citing investigative group Bellingcat, argued that Kyiv was unable to effectively carry out a summer counter-offensive because at least some of the weapons received from Western countries were transferred to Hamas.

Fake in this video issues several signs at once: the BBC font was not used, mistakes were made (for example, the phrase “Ukrainian Prime Minister of Defense”), and militants of the Palestinian group were called terrorists, which British Broadcasting Corporation journalists are fundamentally they don't, explaining this by observing the principle of impartiality. Finally, representatives of the BBC and Bellingcat stated that they did not release such materials. Other videos supporting the same Kremlin narrative, like established “Verified” are also either falsified or cannot be considered any convincing evidence.

It is noteworthy that publications about the resale of Western weapons by the Ukrainian authorities appeared this year and before the Hamas attack on Israel. For example, in early July, amid mass protests in Paris, a screenshot circulated from the website of an unnamed English-language newspaper, which claimed that French police were shot at with American rifles transferred from Ukraine. There is no other evidence of this, but in the screenshot was used photo from 2012 from Wikipedia. Earlier in the summer, media and Telegram channels claimed that Ukrainians handed grenade launchers to Mexican drug cartels. The error occurred due to incorrect translation words of the TV presenter, a fragment of the broadcast with whose participation was used as confirmation.

Shortly after US President Joe Biden promised To provide Israel with the necessary assistance to counter the militants attacking the country, a billboard allegedly appeared on the streets of New York with the caption “Helping the Jews = burning money. Support Ukraine!” According to pro-Kremlin media and Telegram channels, its installation was ordered either by Ukrainians living in the United States or by Zelensky’s associates. The video used as confirmation was actually edited — as in similar fakes, the basis was a fragment of a video posted on YouTube with a walk around New York, and the poster was drawn onto a stand that was in the frame.

A month later, the opposite news came from the American metropolis - this time, on a huge media facade in Manhattan, they allegedly showed a video in which they called for supporting Israel instead of Ukraine. The video went viral far beyond the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. But fact checkers from different countries independently of each other installed: in fact, at that moment an advertisement for the cartoon was shown on the screen, and for the first time the edited recording appeared in the pro-war Russian-language Telegram channel.

Hamas attack on Israel: “new Bucha”»

However, not all the fakes concerning the new war in the Middle East that were spread on the Russian-language Internet were directly related to Ukraine. Many media outlets and Telegram channels published false information that had previously appeared on foreign social networks and (much less often) media, in accordance with who they support in the renewed Arab-Israeli conflict. Particularly popular on pro-Kremlin resources have become stories that, through drawing parallels with the war in Ukraine, help prove the narratives of Russian propaganda. 

One of them is the staged nature of Western media reports, about this back in May 2022 spoke, for example, press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov. In October 2023, Russian pro-government Telegram channels at least twice cited examples of foreign television channels producing staged stories from the war zone in the Middle East. True, in the case of the report by Clarissa Ward from CNN it turned out, that this is a re-voiced recording prepared by a Trumpist blogger, and in the case of the report by Cristina Chileacu from the Romanian channel Digi24 - simply cropped a video in which, as a result of editing, the air raid signal and the sound of an explosion are not heard.

Russian officials and pro-government speakers used arguments about the productions primarily in comments about the massacres in the Ukrainian Bucha, to which the Russian army, according to them, had nothing to do. After the kibbutzim located near the Gaza Strip were liberated from Hamas militants and photographs of the massacre carried out there were scattered around the world, many Russian-language Telegram channels made a direct analogy: the media announced “40 beheaded babies,” then an IDF representative in a comment to Anadolu Agency said that he could not yet confirm this, and in mid-October, social networks were flooded with messages about the “Israeli Butch.” It is difficult to call these accusations fair. In the stories of the film crew of the Israeli TV channel i24, which was the first to visit Kibbutz Kfar Aza and whose reports were later referenced around the world, it says separately about beheaded civilians and about 40 rescued children. These two statements subsequently (with the help of, for example, the British tabloids) became glued together, and the formula “40 beheaded babies” began to be used (with different connotations) by sympathizers on both sides of the conflict. It is not known for certain how many Israeli children were actually killed in this way, but the discovery of several headless corpses was confirmed, among other things, by independent forensic experts.

And even direct evidence published by Israeli officials was considered fake in pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. This happened, for example, with a photo of the body of a small child burned by militants, which was posted on the X account of the Prime Minister of Israel. Many resources claimed that this was actually the result of processing a picture of a puppy in a veterinary clinic using neural networks. “Such a number of fakes from the Israeli authorities and the Israeli media indicates a serious lack of original materials, since such fabrications have to be dealt with,” wrote Boris Rozhin (Colonelcassad). In reality, the situation was strictly the opposite. Photo with a puppy created user X, who commented: “Took me five seconds to do this. Creating a convincing fake photo is no longer difficult. It’s harder to fake a video, but they’ll never show a video with proof.”

Cover photo: collage “Checked”