In February 2024, information spread across the Internet about an unusual type of event, bets on which could supposedly be placed on the website of the world's largest bookmaker. We checked whether this news is true.
It is stated that immediately after statements Ukrainian command about the withdrawal of units from Avdiivka, the British bookmaker company Betfair began accepting bets on which city of the Ukrainian Armed Forces would be left next. Clients are allegedly offered to choose between Zaporozhye, Dnieper, Kherson, Kharkov, Odessa and even Kiev. According to bookmakers, the most likely seizure of Zaporozhye and Kherson, the least likely - Kyiv. The news was accompanied by a corresponding screenshot.
A few days later the story got continuation — Nikolay Terekhov, the son of Kharkov Mayor Igor Terekhov, allegedly made a bet on Betfair. Moreover, he supposedly bet on the surrender of his own city.
Information about this was disseminated by such publications as “News of Siberia", "Kherson news feed" and TV channel "Constantinople" The news gained significant popularity on Telegram thanks to the channels “Sheikh Tamir"(170,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Notepad Russia 18+" (162,000), "Oleg Tsarev"(115,000), "Cat Kostyan"(106,000), Gura Anton (86,000), "Ramsay" (79,000) and "Russian format"(59,000).
On the night of February 17, 2024, Ukrainian troops, after months of fighting left Avdeevka is a city in close proximity to Donetsk, which from the very beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion became a target for the Russian Armed Forces. Among the reasons for departure in Ukraine called both the numerical and technical superiority of the Russian army, and delays in the supply of weapons from Western countries.
The first thing that catches your eye is that the media and Telegram channels are distributing a screenshot for some reason of the Swedish version of the Betfair website. Indeed, there is a “Politics” subsection, where you can bet on various political events, mainly the results of the upcoming elections.
The lists of events in the screenshots are largely the same, but in place of the item Ukraine - Russia’s next goal (“Ukraine is Russia’s next goal”) on the real site it is indicated US - Joe Manchin Special. Users are encouraged to bet on the possible re-election of West Virginia Senator Joe Mancina to take office in 2024.
The right side of the menu looks even weirder. The subtitle indicates the total number of options (that is, Ukrainian cities for which bets are accepted) - 124. However, the names of only six of them are presented below.
Apparently, the basis for the edited screenshot was a page with bets on the winner of the US presidential election. There are exactly 124 options, and even the odds of the top six contenders partially coincide (the rest, most likely, differ due to the time difference between taking the screenshot and writing this analysis).
The screenshot was not distributed outside Russian and pro-Russian online resources. According to the TGStat service, the earliest message with him appeared on Telegram on February 19 at 09:48 Moscow time in the channel “cibulya ua"(3100 views) with the hashtag #nampishut, and the first major source of its distribution after 25 minutes was the channel "Dill fresh"(22,000 views with 375 reposts). He more than once turned out to be primary source fake information about the war in Ukraine.
As for the news about Nikolai Terekhov, it was first posted on February 20 at 12:02 in the satirical Telegram channel “The Empire is very evil" Messages from this resource repeatedly were accepted by users at face value and distributed on the Internet under the guise of real ones.
Therefore, it is not possible to place a bet on any event related to the war in Ukraine on the Betfair website. The screenshot that has been circulating on the Internet has all the signs of being edited. The information about the bet made by the son of the Kharkov mayor is also untrue - this is fictitious news. Moreover, in the second case it is incorrect approved, as if Terekhov’s three adult sons live in the UK. In fact, for June 2023, if believe to the official himself, only his middle son lived abroad, while the eldest was volunteering in his homeland, and the youngest (then still a minor) was finishing school, also on the territory of Ukraine.
Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons
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