In December 2024, news spread on the Internet that more than 83% of Ukrainian users watched the live broadcast of Vladimir Putin. We have verified the accuracy of this information.
On December 20, the day after the final press conference of the President of the Russian Federation, the news was widely circulated in Telegram channels and the media that the broadcast of Vladimir Putin’s address was actively monitored in Ukraine. The results of the year with the President of the Russian Federation were allegedly watched by 83% of Ukrainian users, while the overall depth of viewing was 87%, that is, viewers watched the broadcast almost to the end. Internet users from Ukraine watched the broadcast through foreign media platforms, which broadcast it for all four and a half hours. The resources that published the news refer to a study by the Oxford Internet Institute. Some also include a one-minute video purporting to be published by Reuters that provides this information.
The news was spread by Telegram channels “Evil proof️"(217,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Ukraine.ru"(138,000), "Petya the First"(78,000), "Kot Kostyan - official channel"(73,000), "In///d"(58,000), etc. Notes about the involvement of Ukrainian users during the broadcast of the year's results also appeared on media platforms "RIA Novosti", "Constantinople", EADaily And Smotrim.ru.
December 19 passed Direct Line with Vladimir Putin is an annual event during which the President of the Russian Federation sums up the results of the year and answers questions from citizens and journalists. The broadcast lasted four and a half hours. One of the main topics was the war in Ukraine—Putin devoted about a quarter of the entire program to it.
Oxford Internet Institute (OII), which is cited as the original source of the study, is a research center and teaching unit of the University of Oxford. There they engage in interdisciplinary research that combines social and computer sciences. The center's employees study the problems of the spread of fake news, the use of artificial intelligence, security, user data privacy and much more. However, on official website Institute has no information about viewers of Putin's direct line. There are no similar publications on the center’s social networks (X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn). And in the last post on the page in X reported, that the institute goes on Christmas holidays from the evening of December 20, and therefore all departments will be closed until January 2. The press conference itself ended on the evening of December 19, and news about the results of the study spread at noon the next day. If this information is to be believed, OII employees managed to obtain data from broadcast owners and analyze them in less than 24 hours.
Sources who spread the news about the live line being viewed by Ukrainian Internet users also note that foreign media platforms were used for this, which “broadcast from beginning to end.” What specific resources these were was not specified, and the exact number of Ukrainian users watching the broadcast was also not indicated. Several reputable international media outlets did broadcast a complete or nearly complete broadcast of the live line - e.g. The Times, The Guardian, Sky News, CNBC And The Telegraph. Get Information about the geographic location and duration of viewer retention on YouTube is available only to account holders. However, you can roughly understand the interest of users in the broadcast using open data. For example, the TV channel with the largest number of subscribers listed above is Sky News, but their broadcasts it now has a total of about 59,000 views. This is the sum of all viewers who opened the video both during the broadcast and after it ended.
According to DataReportal, at the beginning of 2024 in Ukraine there were 29.64 million Internet users. This means that more than 24 million Ukrainians had to watch the live broadcast. Even if you add up the total number of all views of foreign media broadcasts, it is unlikely that you will get such a number of views. This figure is even more than total number of viewerswho watched the live line on Russian TV channels.
In addition to the link to OII, some resources that spread the news about the interest of Ukrainian users in the direct line of the Russian president published a video allegedly made by the international agency Reuters. The video, assembled from live footage of Vladimir Putin, is accompanied by subtitles in English. The Reuters logo is visible in the upper right corner. The video is designed in the same style as short videos in verified agency accounts in TikTok, on YouTube and in Instagram. Despite the logo and similar format, the rest of the videos are significantly different. Firstly, the video is made in a horizontal format, as opposed to the usual vertical one, which is usually used for reelz or shorts. Secondly, Reuters does not put its logo on short videos, always indicates the date and place of the incident, does not use an orange frame and does not highlight the subtitle text in different colors. It is also unclear why in the viral video the media on whose platforms Ukrainians allegedly watched the broadcast are called foreign.
“Verified” did not find a story about Ukrainian users viewing a direct line on the verified resources of the publication in X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and on YouTube, nor on him official website. This information is not available in other authoritative sources.
The news was spread mainly by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and media. It also went viral in the Russian-language segment of the social network X, and there are several posts and in English. Earliest publication with information about the research we are interested in appeared in the Telegram channel “Military Observer” on December 20 at 12:31 Moscow time. The first post was not accompanied by a video, but two hours later, at 14:30 Moscow time, the Medved Telegram channel posted a fabricated Reuters video, after which it began to spread. Both of these channels are often featured V debriefings “Verified” both as distributors of fake news and as their primary sources.
Creating videos that mimic the stories of authoritative media is a common method of fake makers. The authors of such videos, as a rule, use previously published footage and edit them into one video with the text of the fabricated news superimposed. “Verified” analyzed fake stories from BBC, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera and others. In addition, exactly a year ago, after Putin’s final press conference in 2023, Telegram channels distributed a similar video, allegedly published by the Euronews TV channel. In that story it was saidthat 75% of Ukrainian users followed the broadcast of the press conference using various VPN services. It also turned out to be fake.
Thus, neither the Oxford Internet Institute nor Reuters published information that the vast majority of Internet users from Ukraine watched the direct line with the President of the Russian Federation. Reports of this are based on a fabricated video and are not confirmed by other sources.
Cover photo: screenshot of the broadcast / kremlin.ru
- StopFake. Fake: More than 83% of Ukrainians watched “Review of the Year with Vladimir Putin” - Oxford Internet Institute
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