At the end of September 2024, Internet users circulated messages about a petition that allegedly appeared on the website of Vladimir Zelensky. Its author, bloggers say, asks the president to name Donetsk Joe Biden. We decided to check if this is true.
On September 30, an image appeared on social networks, which was claimed to be a screenshot of the petitions section on the website of the President of Ukraine. One of these initiatives is allegedly dedicated to a request to rename Donetsk. Its author, Andrei Vladimirovich Moskal, calls for perpetuating the name of US President Joe Biden, who consistently supports Ukraine, and renaming Donetsk to Bidenodar. “This word, which means ‘Biden gifts,’ will become a geographic memory of US aid on the map of Ukraine,” the viral screenshot reads. It was distributed by dozens of Telegram channels, including “Falcon"(202,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Uncle Slava" (176,000) and "First People's | News"(102,000).
In Ukraine, according to the law “About citizens' appeals", petitions addressed to the head of state, are placed on the website of the President of the country. The viral image shows the petition's creation date as September 30, 2024. During this day, 18 appeals to the president appeared on the website. 16 of them are about awarding the title of Hero of Ukraine to servicemen who died at the front, one is about organizing the production of American ATACMS ballistic missiles in the country, another is about granting a deferment from military service to those whose spouse is classified as group III disabled. “Verified” did not find any petitions to rename Donetsk. It’s not there either archival copy the corresponding section on the website, made on the night of September 30 to October 1.
The second discrepancy is the petition's serial number. For the virus-ridden document, it is No. 22/534728-ep. Meanwhile, the numbers on the site are in order, they are assigned automatically, and the last one at the time of writing the analysis is No. 22/235072-ep. That is, a petition with such a number obviously could not be filed in 2024.
Finally, the document that appeared on the Internet was allegedly posted by the head of the Ukrainian Movement movement in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, Andrey Moskal. “Verified” was unable to find a public figure with this name; this combination is mentioned only on sites that posted news about the renaming of Donetsk.
The earliest publication that contains a screenshot and which “Verified” was able to track appeared on September 30 at 16:36 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Kot Kostyan - official channel"(73,000 views). This resource mentioned in several dozen of our analyzes as a distributor and primary source of disinformation about Ukraine.
Previously, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels had already distributed screenshots of similar fake petitions on the website of the President of Ukraine. For example, in July there allegedly collected signatures on the initiative to name the 3rd Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces after the right-wing activist Irina Farion, who was killed shortly before in Lviv.
Thus, the petition to rename Donetsk that has gone viral on the Internet is a fake. The authors apparently failed to create a deliberately absurd petition on the corresponding website: this can only be done by citizens of Ukraine, past identification by passport data, electronic signature or through an account in a Ukrainian bank.
Cover photo: social networks
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