At the beginning of December 2024, a screenshot of the advertisement circulated on the RuNet. It read: Ukrainians are needed to participate in street protests in Tbilisi. We have verified the accuracy of this news.
Judging by the screenshot, in Chernigov they are looking for “strong guys” to participate in the protests in Georgia, which have been ongoing since the end of October. Candidates are promised to be paid €35 per day for three weeks, and also guarantee accommodation, food and “no problems” when crossing the border. “Combat experience, street protest experience and martial arts proficiency will be a plus,” the ad says. Some sources, in addition to this screenshot, provide a photograph of the passport of a Ukrainian citizen, which was allegedly found in Tbilisi at the site of the demonstrations.
The Russians reported this (“Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Constantinople", News2.ru) and Belarusian (Belteleradiocompany) Media, as well as Telegram channels "Ukraine.ru"(122,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Alexander Semchenko"(77,000), "Ukraine without options"(45,000), "Ramsay» (38,000), etc.
In October 2024, parliamentary elections were held in Georgia, in which, according to official data, the ruling Georgian Dream party received 54% of the vote. Pro-European opposition and the country's president Salome Zurabishvili statedthat the voting results were falsified, and called for mass protests. The tension increased refusal Zurabishvili will leave her post at the end of her term unless new parliamentary elections are held. On December 14, for the first time in the history of Georgia, the new head of state was elected not by the citizens of the country directly, but by an electoral college from among deputies and representatives of local governments. President on an uncontested basis became former football player and now conservative politician Mikheil Kavelashvili. His inauguration is scheduled for December 29.
The rallies took place for several days after the parliamentary elections, and then flared up with renewed vigor at the end of November, when Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that negotiations on the country's accession to the EU were suspended until 2028. Demonstrations near the parliament building were accompanied by harsh arrests and clashes: radical protesters used pyrotechnics against security forces; in response, special forces used water cannons and pepper gas. Not only citizens of Georgia, but also foreigners living in this country participate in the actions - for example, from November 28 to December 10, local police detained 15 Russians. At the same time, Russian pro-government media constantly draw parallels between the current protests in Tbilisi and the Ukrainian Euromaidan, paying attention to the yellow-blue flags brought by protesters and stripes with the symbols of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the clothes of some demonstrators.
According to the screenshot, the ad was posted on November 30 on the website work.ua, a popular job search service in Ukraine. However, “Verified” did not find such vacancies on this portal at the time of writing the analysis. At the same time, for some reason the construction industry and woodworking are indicated as the field of activity of the employer - a certain V.N. Petrenko, and the advertisement itself is placed under the heading “Providing security.”
An almost identical ad two days earlier, on November 28, was posted by a certain V.N. Yareshko, who was actually looking for a security guard. In two vacancies, the city, the company’s field of activity, the employer’s specialization and the number of employees are the same. It is highly likely that this ad became the basis for the viral image.
Fact checkers from the project "Gvara Media» contacted work.ua for comment. Representatives of the service responded that an advertisement for the search for activists to participate in mass protests in Georgia had never been posted on their portal. In addition, as the work.ua manager noted, such a publication would have been filtered already at the pre-moderation stage, since it contained certain stop words.
As for the photograph of the Ukrainian passport allegedly found in Tbilisi, it is also reported with reference to a screenshot of the announcement of the find. Some of these publications also included a photo of the document itself.
Such a publication on the Georgian website of free advertisements Cenotavr really exists. It was posted on December 3, and a passport in the name of a certain Mikhailo Solyak, born in 1982, was allegedly found in Tbilisi on Rustaveli Avenue (this is where the Georgian Parliament building is located and most of the protests take place).
However, a reverse Google image search reveals that this is not the first time the same passport photo has been published.
Back in December 2020 photo posted in the Facebook group “Bus Stations of Transcarpathia” - Solyak’s international passport was found at the bus station in Uzhgorod, located near the Ukrainian-Slovak border.
So, although the Cenotavr ad is real, the poster used a photo that was first posted on social media almost four years ago. The screenshot from the work.ua website is simply fake - apparently, it was falsified based on a real advertisement that has nothing to do with Georgia. Apparently, both fake news stories were created to promote a propaganda thesis about outside interference in the political process in this country.
According to the TGStat service, the earliest publication about a non-existent Chernigov ad appeared on December 5 at 15:31 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Crossbow says" He more than once mentioned in “Checked” analyzes as original source false information. The photo of the Tbilisi passport announcement was first posted by the channel “ZhS Premium” (part of the Yellow Plums grid) a few minutes earlier.
Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons. The photo was taken in 2022.
Read on topic:
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