At the end of March 2024, videos and photos of leaflets from a Ukrainian funeral bureau were distributed across the Internet, where a special promotion was supposedly taking place: soldiers could purchase a coffin in advance and pay for it later. We checked whether this advertisement is real.
On March 27, reports appeared on the Russian segment of the Internet that some residents of the Ukrainian capital had found leaflets from the Relikviya ritual agency in their mailboxes. The proof of this is a photograph and a five-second video. “In Kyiv they sell coffins in installments. No additional overpayments or commissions for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Super promotion until the end of March. This is how they did it,” says a post on the Telegram channel “Russia now"(299,000 views at the time of writing this analysis). Channel "Ukraine.ru“(150,000 views) added: “This is today’s Ukrainian reality.” And the authors of the channel “Actually in Dnieper"(48,000 views) drew attention to the phrase from the leaflet: "One of the points in the booklet is very noteworthy: “Lying in our coffin, you will feel all the beauty of comfort” - is this special cynicism or idiocy?
According to the TGStat service, more than 160 posts on this topic appeared on Telegram, and in total they received about 1.3 million views. The channels “Alexander Semchenko"(99,000 views), "Gasparyan"(65,000), "Partisans"(47,000), "Uncle Slava on Telegram"(43,000), Avia.pro (22,000), "Olesya Loseva"(15,000), etc. Similar messages appeared on VKontakte (examples here, here And here), social network X (here, here And here), "Zene", LiveJournal and on some newswebsites.
The distributed photograph and video recording were made in such a way that it is impossible to determine from them the location of the shooting. At the same time, the viral images show three leaflets with a logo, phone number and address in reality existing funeral bureau "Relic", working in Kyiv. In addition to the slogan of the proposed promotion (“Buy now, pay later!”), the booklet contains the following information about the promotion:
- have time to buy a coffin in installments before the end of March;
- no additional overpayments and commissions for the Armed Forces of Ukraine;
- lying in our coffin, you will feel all the charm of comfort;
- our team will help you in difficult times 24/7.
To begin with, “Verified” tried to track down the original source from which the spread of the photo and video began. The earliest post that we were able to detect appeared on March 27 at 14:38 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Kot Kostyan - official channel"(106,000 views). Previously “Verified” dozens of times incriminated him in publishing false messages. For example, “Kot Kostyan” was one of the first resources that reported that leaflets were being distributed among Ukrainian pensioners calling for them to go to the front. Our check showedthat it was a fake.
On the official website The funeral agency "Relic" does not have any information about the action that allegedly took place until the end of March. On March 29, “Verified” sent a request to the press service of the funeral company. “We learned about this incident when these screenshots appeared in our reviews. Of course, we did not have any such promotions and we never published such advertising material. It’s a shame that such stuffing happens in numerous Telegram channels and harms both our country and the reputation of our funeral home,” agency manager Lisa Babina wrote in a response message.
In addition, our colleagues from the Ukrainian fact-checking project “Gvara Media” turned attention to the linguistic inconsistency present on the captured leaflets. All text on the advertising booklet is written in Ukrainian, but the Russian abbreviation VSU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) is used, although the correct Ukrainian version is ZSU (Armed Forces of Ukraine).
Thus, the Kiev funeral bureau did not hold a campaign in which employees of the Armed Forces of Ukraine could buy coffins in installments. This information was denied by the company that allegedly carried it out, and for the first time, viral images of the leaflet (with an error in the spelling of the Ukrainian abbreviation) appeared on the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel, which had previously been caught distributing fakes more than once. Apparently, unknown individuals printed several fake booklets, placed them in mailboxes themselves, and then took photographs.
Cover photo: social networks
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