At the end of March 2024, the reports dispersed in 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 fought with appropriate methods. We checked the authenticity of this statement.
Similar publications began to massively disperse on Telegram on March 21. According to these posts in which Mikhail Podolyak called The Ukrainian adviser to Zelensky, he published a tweet with charges against farmers protesters in Poland. The politician allegedly stated that demonstrators threaten Europe and thereby work for Putin and Russia. Specifiedthat then Podolyak immediately removed the tweet. As evidence, the authors give three screenshots: one shows the alleged English -speaking tweet, on the second - its allegedly sunken version, and on the third - the 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 gained about 1.5 million views. Among the most popular channels that wrote about the alleged tweet of Podolyak, - “Uncle Glory"(163,000 views), Voblya (142 000), "Sheikh Tamir"(134,000),"Belarusian security officer"(101 000),"Federation"(62 000) and"Yakov Kedmi"(45,000). There are such publications in public And on the personal Pages VKontakte users, as well as on some news sites.
Let's start with a slight clarification regarding the position of Podolyak. In fact, he does not advise directly to Vladimir Zelensky, but since 2020 occupies The post of adviser Andrei Ermak - The head of the office of the President (OP) of Ukraine.
Now as for the protests of the farmers. In the summer of 2022, the European Union as part of the implementation of measures to support the Ukrainian economy canceled Duties and quotas for imports from this country to facilitate transit along land routes to other markets. But because of logistics problems, this brought to a sharp increase in supply and accumulation of Ukrainian grains in neighboring countries of Eastern Europe. The situation caused the discontent and protests of local farmers, which They saidWhat cheaper products from Ukraine reduces prices for local goods and income of local agricultural enterprises. So, in Poland, through which a significant part of the Ukrainian grain passes, within 2023, farmer groups Arranged many shares and demonstrations. Since January 2024, protests, called Including the agrarian policy of the EU, pass throughout Europe, they continued in Poland. For example, in Warsaw at the end of February took place The thousands of the participants, 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, this Commented Promotions 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 realize their protests. Well, they have claims to Brussels, and not to us. And so they decided: "And let's parallel with this at the most painful point - we will go to the border with Ukraine and humiliate Ukrainians." On question leading about whether there is Russian influence behind these events and how much it can be great, an adviser with a smile answered: “120%. <...> Russia is most interested. " Next is Podolyak He called it Poland is one of the main and most valuable partners of Ukraine and Added: “I would not want us to escalater this problem with emotions. We still need to continue to communicate with our Polish colleagues, information and reputation to explain how it looks, including for the reputation of Poland. ”
The text of Twitte from viral screenshots in Russian is like this: “My opinion (I can’t vouch for the whole office). Now Polish farmers undermine stability in Europe and directly threaten security in the region. Consciously or not, but they work for Russia. And so they are all Putin agents. And you need to fight them with appropriate methods. ” However, many inaccuracies in the spread screenshots indicate that the images were fabricated, but he did not write Podolyak and, accordingly, did not remove this post.
In its previous analysis, “verified” used as an argument proving the fabrication of a particular entry in social networks, the absence of its sunken copies. But in the case of the proposed publication of Podolyak, the situation is slightly different: among the materials distributed in Telegram and other resources, there is a screenshot allegedly taken on the site Internet Archive. Permanent users of this service can immediately notice some inconsistencies in the image. Firstly, in the upper left corner the number of stored copies of the page, as well as the date of the first and last archiving, which is not in the distributed picture, should be indicated. Judging by the fact that the upper right corner is not shown blue, but the gray arrows for switching between different versions, the alleged podolyak tweet should have only one sized copy, that is, the following inscription should be in the left corner: “1 Capture 21 Mar 2024”. Secondly, the viral screenshot shows the interface of the user X with the user X with the @anwritlana69031 user (we will return to it later), but this cannot be, since Internet archive automatically retains pages in the X in the form in which they will be shown not registered in social networks. Thirdly, according to the virus screenshot, a specific hem of Podolyak was archived, but the preserved copy looks like if the profile of an adviser OP was archived.
The screenshot shows that a copy of the tweet with URLs was made https://twitter.com/podolyak_m/status/168044309427251868?s=20 (adding? S = 20 Indicates To the fact that they shared a post). In fact, such a link Not saved on Internet archive; Nevertheless, it gives us a lot of additional information.
Each object in X (and earlier on Twitter), whether it be a tweet, personal message, user, etc. has Unique identifier. In the early stages of the development of the platform, it was a relatively small number, but today's identifiers are unique 64-bit integers without a sign. The full identifier consists of a time mark, a special working number and a serial number. They are generated by 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 from ID 168044309427251868 was supposed to be published On February 10, 2012.
In addition, there is a method thanks to which you can find the original tweet, knowing only its ID. The social network X ignores the user's name in their addresses that have the following shape: https://twitter.com//back | When crossing the reference with the added identifier and a non-sparking or invalid name, the social network will automatically redirect the user to the URL with the right user. In order not to do it manually, you can use the special toolwhich adds ID to the following address: https://twitter.com/anyuser/status/. So it was “verified” that Twita with the identifier 168044309427251868, which is indicated on viral screenshots, does not exist (perhaps it was previously deleted or that placed it in 2012).
Another inaccuracy can be found in the second extended image. According to the screenshot dismantled above, Podolyak’s tweet was archived on March 21, and published an hour earlier. Since we do not know the exact time when the screen was allegedly taken, it can be assumed that the politician wrote about the Polish farmers no later than the deep evening of March 20. But this situation certainly could not happen. The fact is that in the second screenshot you can see the date of the previous tweet of Podolyak - March 19. At the same time, his profile has a tweet that was published In the afternoon of March 20. In other words, if the screenshot were genuine, then this date would be visible in the lower part of the image.
The earliest publication with the first fake screenshot of the Podolyak tweet among those that traveled “verified” appeared on March 21 at 15:03 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Freshness"(36,000 views). The earliest post with the second fabricated picture of the screen we found in the channel "Bear”(18,000 views; March 22 at 11:03). Both These channel Repeatedly published fakes, mainly discrediting Ukraine, and often became the original source of their spread.
Now let's get back to the profile Mrs. Smith Jr. (@anwritlana69031), which was lit by the authors of the fake. This is the so -called bot, that is, the account of the fake user, which is needed to promote a certain agenda. The page was created in April 2023, and since then its owner, supposedly living in the USA, Not set not a single like and Published 74 tweet. “Tested” studied these tweets and found out that they were all written uniformly: the bot left the repay under posts of popular accounts (among them foreign politicians and the media) with a request to follow the attached link. According to the assessment of the project "Botan lock", Actions MRS. Smith Jr. Similar to the behavior of bots from the early version "Matryoshki" - a new anti -Ukrainian misinformation campaign directed against Western media. All 74 tweet-comments of this bot covered only three topics:
- Since May 31, 2023, he placed eight requests look Videoin which the Americans were called to cooperate with the foreign intelligence service of the Russian Federation;
- From June 7, 2023, 57 appeared in the account requests subscribe petition on the termination of supplies of European lethal weapons to Ukraine (by the end of March 2024, only 182 people did it);
- Since July 27, 2023, under posts of accounts associated with Nigeria, a bot nine times He wrotethat Ukrainians want to make the Nigerians slaves. At the same time, a link to the Nigerian site for the search for work was given, where a certain Igor Tkachenko posted announcement About a free group internship for Africans at Ukrainian plantation for marijuana production.
Thus, Mikhail Podolyak did not publish a tweet in which the protesting Polish farmers are called Putin agents. Large pro-Kremlin Telegram channels once again distributed an anti-Ukrainian fake, the authors of which, due to ignorance of the specifics of the Internet archive, also lit up the page of their bot in the social network X.
Photo on the cover: mpodolyak2 (Facebook)
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