In mid-September 2024, messages circulated on the Internet according to which Ukrainian diplomat Nikolai Khomenko was injured as a result of massive explosions of communications equipment in Lebanon. We have verified the accuracy of this news.
In the second half of September 2024, numerous explosions occurred in Lebanon and Syria on communications equipment used by members of the armed group Hezbollah. First wave, during which pagers detonated en masse, began on September 17 at approximately 15:30 Moscow time and continued, according to various sources, from 30 min. to hours. The next day exploded walkie-talkies and other radio-electronic equipment. By data Lebanese Ministry of Health, as a result of which, in two days, at least 32 people were killed and more than 3,000 were injured in this country; civilian casualties, including children, were reported. Iranian news agencies statedthat Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani was injured, but his life was nothing not threatening. Hezbollah blamed the attacks on Israel. According to sources The New York Times and other media, the operation was carried out by Israeli intelligence, but the country's President Isaac Herzog denies Israeli involvement in the bombings.
Already on the evening of September 17, publications appeared on the Internet that the first secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy in Lebanon, Nikolai Khomenko, was injured in a pager explosion in Beirut. Some of these recordings contain a short Arabic-language video. According to the TGStat service, at the time of writing this analysis, at least 240 posts about Khomenko’s alleged injury were published on Telegram. So, Telegram channels wrote about this “Russia now"(215,000 views), "Ukraine.ru"(146,000), Alex Parker Returns (127,000), "Typical Odessa"(109,000), "Ostashko! Important"(102,000), etc. Channel "The world today with "Yuri Podolyak""(1.8 million views) referred to the channel's entry "This is different"(68,000 views), which also mentioned the injury of a Ukrainian diplomat in Beirut. Many similar posts are posted on VKontakte (examples here, here And here). Notes about the allegedly injured Khomenko were published by Russian publications “Constantinople", "Another Ukraine" And "Ukraine.ru", as well as Israeli resources, including the site "Details" And newsru.co.il (the latter clarified that the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry did not comment on this information and that the information was being verified).
Publications that a Ukrainian diplomat was injured in a pager explosion in Beirut were published in different languages. For example, on social network X there are similar tweets on English, German, Italian And Spanish. English-language posts with thousands of views are also posted on Telegram (here, here And here). Some of the resources mentioned at the beginning of this analysis referred to unnamed Lebanese media, and similar posts and notes in Arabic are actually found on the Internet. For example, in X, the earliest Arabic-language tweet about Khomenko (among those that Verified was able to track) appeared at 18:53 Moscow time in the account @Roaastudies (18,000 views). There is a post on Telegram in Arabic that appeared a minute earlier - it was posted by a publicist Alexander Nazarov (6200 views). However, the earliest publication mentioning Khomenko’s injury, which was found by “Verified,” was published in the Russian-language pro-Kremlin Telegram channel “Sheikh Tamir” (185,000 views), where the post appeared at 18:32. This channel mentioned in more than 170 of our analyzes and dozens of times became the primary source of misinformation.
The post of “Sheikh Tamir” is accompanied by a video that lasts only 8 seconds. It is a parallel stitching of several different videos (one on the left and two on the right), while at the bottom of the combined recording there is an Arabic-language caption that reads: “As a result of the explosion of a communication device, the secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy in Lebanon, Mykola Khomenko, was injured.” In the upper right corner is the logo of the Iraqi TV channel Al Rasheed TV.
"Verified" studied website Al Rasheed and channel accounts in social networks, but I didn’t find such a video about Khomenko there. Moreover, the viral video is only at first glance similar to media materials from the Iraqi media. For example, the design of the video is somewhat reminiscent of the preview of some video on the channel’s social networks, but the recordings themselves use a different design. “Verified” sent requests for comment to the Al Rasheed press service, but at the time of publication of this analysis did not receive a response.
The video clips themselves shown in the viral video are in no way connected with the secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy. September 17 at social networks And Media these recordings were individually used to demonstrate the effects of electronic device explosions. On that day, Al Rasheed also shared these videos (for example, in X, TikTok and on YouTube). In the version of the Iraqi TV channel, they were edited one after another (another episode was also added there), and the total duration of the video was 62 seconds. There is a post with this recording in the Al Rasheed Telegram channel appeared at 17:02 - an hour and a half before the publication of “Sheikh Tamir”. At the same time, the caption of the Iraqi media said: “Scenes from Beirut after the explosion of wireless communication devices,” and did not mention Khomenko. In addition, the official Al Rasheed video used proprietary animations and a closing title sequence, which are not present in the viral video.
The Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine called reports of Khomenko’s injury a fake. “Having verified the information at the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and the Ukrainian Embassy in Lebanon, the Center reports that there are neither Ukrainian diplomats nor Ukrainian citizens among the dead and wounded. Russian propaganda spreads such fakes in order to accuse Ukraine of collaborating with terrorist groups and sow mistrust on the part of the international community,” asserts Ukrainian department.
Thus, there is no direct evidence that a Ukrainian diplomat was injured in a pager explosion in Lebanon. Apparently, this information initially appeared thanks to the Russian Telegram channel, which has been repeatedly caught spreading fakes. Ukrainian authorities also deny that their diplomat was injured in Beirut.
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Cover photo: social networks
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