At the end of March 2024, messages circulated on social networks that the adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine said: Polish farmers blocking the border are working for Russia, and they must be dealt with using appropriate methods. We have verified the authenticity of this statement.
Similar publications began to spread en masse on Telegram on March 21. According to these posts in which Mikhail Podolyak called Ukrainian adviser to Zelensky, he published a tweet accusing farmers protesting in Poland. The politician allegedly said that demonstrators threaten the security of Europe and thereby work for Putin and Russia. To be confirmedthat Podolyak then immediately deleted the tweet. As evidence, the authors provide three screenshots: one shows the alleged English-language tweet, the second shows its supposedly archived version, and the third shows a translation of the text into Russian.
According to the TGStat service, at the time of writing this analysis, about 130 posts on this topic appeared on Telegram, in total they received about 1.5 million views. Among the most popular channels that wrote about Podolyak’s alleged tweet are “Uncle Slava"(163,000 views), Voblya (142,000), "Sheikh Tamir"(134,000), "Belarusian security officer"(101,000), "Federation" (62,000) and "Yakov Kedmi"(45,000). Such publications can be found in publics and on personal pages users of VKontakte, as well as on some news websites.
Let's start with a small clarification regarding Podolyak's position. In fact, he does not directly advise Vladimir Zelensky, but since 2020 takes advisor post Andrey Ermak - Head of the Office of the President (OP) of Ukraine.
Now regarding the farmers' protests. In the summer of 2022, the European Union, as part of the implementation of measures to support the Ukrainian economy canceled tariffs and quotas on imports from that country to facilitate transit along land routes to other markets. But due to logistical problems this led to a sharp increase in supplies and accumulation of Ukrainian grain in neighboring countries of Eastern Europe. The situation caused dissatisfaction and protests from local farmers, who statedthat cheaper products from Ukraine reduce the prices of local goods and the income of local agricultural enterprises. Thus, in Poland, through which a significant part of Ukrainian grain passes, during 2023 farmer groups arranged many actions and demonstrations. Since January 2024, protests caused by including EU agricultural policy, are taking place throughout Europe, and they continued in Poland. For example, in Warsaw at the end of February took place A march of many thousands, whose participants opposed the import of food from Ukraine and, in their opinion, excessive regulation of the agricultural sector by Brussels. Moreover, from time to time, protesters throughout the country block roads and crossings across the border with Ukraine.
Speaking on Ukrainian television in February, Podolyak commented shares in Poland: “Polish farmers obviously understand that Ukraine is in an extremely difficult situation. I’m not talking about the economy now, because everything is clear with the economy. And they have the right to implement their protests. Well, they have complaints against Brussels, not us. And so they decided: “Let’s hit the most painful point in parallel with this - let’s go to the border with Ukraine and humiliate the Ukrainians.” On question leading about whether there is Russian influence behind these events and how great it can be, the adviser with a smile replied: "120%. <…> Russia is maximally interested.” Next Podolyak named Poland is one of the main and most valuable partners of Ukraine and added: “I wouldn’t want us to escalate this issue with our emotions. We still need to continue to communicate with our Polish colleagues, to explain informationally and reputationally what this looks like, including for the reputation of Poland.”
The text of the tweet from the viral screenshots translated into Russian reads like this: “My opinion (I can’t vouch for the entire Office). Now Polish farmers are undermining stability in Europe and directly threatening security in the region. Consciously or not, they work for Russia. And that’s why they are all Putin’s agents. And we need to fight them using appropriate methods.” However, many inaccuracies in the distributed screenshots indicate that the images were fabricated, and Podolyak did not write and, accordingly, did not delete this post.
In its previous analyses, “Verified” used the absence of its archived copies as an argument proving the fabrication of a particular post on social networks. But in the case of Podolyak’s alleged publication, the situation is somewhat different: among the materials distributed on Telegram and other resources, there is a screenshot allegedly taken on the website Internet Archive. Regular users of this service may immediately notice some inconsistencies in the image. Firstly, in the upper left corner the number of saved copies of the page should be indicated, as well as the dates of the first and last archiving, which is not on the distributed image. Judging by the fact that in the upper right corner there are not blue, but gray arrows for switching between different versions, Podolyak’s alleged tweet should have only one archived copy, that is, in the left corner there should be the following inscription: “1 capture 21 March 2024.” Secondly, the viral screenshot shows the interface of user X who has logged into his profile with the username @anwritlana69031 (we will return to this later), but this cannot be, since the Internet Archive automatically saves pages in X in the form in which they will be shown to a person who is not registered on the social network. Thirdly, if you believe the viral screenshot, Podolyak’s specific tweet was archived, but the saved copy looks as if the profile of the OP’s adviser was archived.
The screenshot shows that a copy of the tweet was made with the URL https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/168044309427251868?s=20 (adding ?s=20 indicates because the post was shared). In reality this link not saved at the Internet Archive; however, it gives us a lot of additional information.
Every object in X (and formerly Twitter), be it a tweet, a private message, a user, etc. has unique identifier. In the early stages of platform development, it was a relatively small number, but today's identifiers are unique 64-bit unsigned integers. The complete identifier consists of a timestamp, a special operating number, and a serial number. They are generated by an internal service Snowflake. Having this data, the exact date and time of publication of any tweet can be calculated by manual selection or using the project TweetedAt. It turned out that the tweet with ID 168044309427251868 should have been published back on February 10, 2012.
In addition, there is a method through which you can find the original tweet, knowing only its ID. Social network X ignores the username in its addresses, which have the following form: https://twitter.com/{Name}/status/{ID}. When clicking on a link with an added ID and a mismatched or invalid name, the social network will automatically redirect the user to a URL with the correct username. To avoid doing this manually, you can use a special toolwhich adds the ID to the following address: https://twitter.com/anyuser/status/. So “Verified” found out that the tweet with ID 168044309427251868, which is indicated in the viral screenshots, does not exist (perhaps it or the account that posted it in 2012 was previously deleted).
Another inaccuracy can be found in the second image being circulated. According to the screenshot above, Podolyak’s tweet was archived on March 21 and published an hour earlier. Since we do not know the exact time when the screenshot was allegedly taken, we can assume that the politician wrote about Polish farmers no later than the late evening of March 20. But such a situation certainly could not happen. The fact is that in the second screenshot you can see the date of Podolyak’s previous tweet - March 19. At the same time, there is a tweet in his profile that was published in the afternoon of March 20. In other words, if the screenshot were genuine, then this particular date would be visible at the bottom of the image.
The earliest publication with the first fake screenshot of Podolyak’s tweet among those tracked by “Verified” appeared on March 21 at 15:03 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Freshness"(36,000 views). We found the earliest post with the second fabricated screenshot in the channel “Bear"(18,000 views; March 22 at 11:03). Both these channel repeatedly published fakes, mostly discrediting Ukraine, and often became the primary source of their distribution.
Now let's go back to the profile Mrs. Smith Jr. (@anwritlana69031), which was highlighted by the authors of the fake. This is a so-called bot, that is, an account of a fake user who is needed to promote a certain agenda. The page was created in April 2023, and since then its owner, allegedly living in the United States, didn't install not a single like and published 74 tweets. “Verified” studied these tweets and found out that they were all written in the same way: the bot left a replay under the posts of popular accounts (among them foreign politicians and media) with a request to follow the attached link. According to the project assessment “Bot blocker", the actions of Mrs. Smith Jr. similar to the behavior of bots from the earlier version "Matryoshka dolls"- a new anti-Ukrainian disinformation campaign directed against Western media. All 74 tweet comments from this bot covered only three topics:
- since May 31, 2023, he has placed eight requests look video, in which Americans were urged to cooperate with the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation;
- since June 7, 2023, 57 have appeared in the account requests subscribe petition on stopping the supply of European lethal weapons to Ukraine (by the end of March 2024, only 182 people had done this);
- since July 27, 2023, under posts of accounts associated with Nigeria, the bot has been used nine times wrotethat Ukrainians want to make Nigerians slaves. At the same time, a link was provided to a Nigerian job search site, where a certain Igor Tkachenko posted announcement about a free group internship for Africans at a Ukrainian marijuana plantation.
Thus, Mikhail Podolyak did not publish a tweet in which the protesting Polish farmers were called Putin’s agents. Large pro-Kremlin Telegram channels once again spread an anti-Ukrainian fake, the authors of which, due to ignorance of the specifics of the work of the Internet archive, also lit up the page of their bot on the social network X.
Cover photo: mpodolyak2 (Facebook)
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