Corrupt Zelensky, bullying of the UOC, murdered NATO generals: what fakes about Ukraine were spread in 2024

This year, pro-Kremlin media and Telegram channels continued to publish disinformation about Ukraine and Ukrainians. “Verified” talks about the underlying narratives that promoted these resources.

Zelensky spends Western money on luxury real estate

From the beginning of 2022 the USA, EU and other countries provided Ukraine receives financial assistance worth tens of billions of euros. This money was allocated to ensure the macroeconomic stability of the warring country and social spending, but Russian propagandists did not miss the opportunity to accuse Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his entourage of misappropriating funds. According to their publications, since the end of 2023, the Ukrainian leader allegedly acquired from Charles III mansion in the UK, with the singer Sting - winery in Italy, and also became the owner of the former Goebbels villas near Berlin, casino in Northern Cyprus and hotels in Courchevel. 

Not only Telegram channels, but also the largest Russian publications, from RT to RBC, spoke about the politician’s illegal enrichment. Such a massive spread of fakes and their spread far beyond the Z-community was facilitated by the method of their legalization: falsified evidence was introduced either through the sites of non-existent Western media with credible names, or through fake web pages of objects allegedly acquired by Zelensky. In some cases, for greater persuasiveness, it was argued that the transactions were carried out through the Belizean offshore Film Heritage Inc., which is actually owned by the Zelensky family and about which became widely known in 2019, after an OCCRP investigation based on materials from the Pandora Archive.

All the resources that media and Telegram channels referred to in their publications were registered several days before the disinformation was spread. Some of the evidence and other materials on the sites were generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The origin of the authors of the fakes was sometimes revealed by the illustrations they used - the names of the files on some of these sites for some reason repeated headlines of Gazeta.ru articles.

The fake makers also paid attention to the First Lady of Ukraine Elena Zelenskaya, who during her visit to France allegedly purchased a Bugatti car for €4.5 million. To legalize this fake, propagandists used the same method, along with fake transaction documents and a video generated by neural networks, in which a dealership employee talks about the sale of a supercar. Zelensky himself, if you believe the fake news, bought Hitler’s car, but in this case, the evidence were falsified.

High-ranking Ukrainian officials also allegedly allow themselves large expenses that exceed their official income. For example, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Ermak, as reported, paid $27 million to be named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. Pro-Kremlin resources referred to a fake BBC video based on a non-existent Bellingcat investigation, and the video first appeared on the Putin on Telegram channel. Another fake was dedicated to the son of former Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, who allegedly spent $1.5 million on a copy of the Iron Throne from the series “Game of Thrones.” The proof was a report from a Texas TV channel, where propagandists added corresponding caption and photographs of Kuleba and his son.

Trump is the Antichrist, but he was removed from “Peacemaker” just in case

Russian propaganda actively covered the US presidential elections. On the one hand, she created And borrowed American right-wing bloggers have fake news about Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, on the other hand, kept silent about the misinformation about Republican Donald Trump that has spread in the English-language segment of social networks. At the same time, pro-Kremlin resources presented him as a champion of “traditional” values, a fighter against the “deep state” and a supporter of a speedy end to the war in Ukraine (apparently, on terms favorable to Moscow).

After Trump won the election, pro-Kremlin channels unleashed a flood of fake news on their readers about how the outcome of the vote affected Ukrainians. Unlike his rival, the Republican did not promise to support Kyiv “as long as it takes,” which means that in the minds of the fake makers, Ukrainians should be outraged by his return to the White House. Therefore, things began to appear in the Z-channels: fake ads about raising money to kill Trump, then edited video, in which a Ukrainian priest allegedly calls the politician the Antichrist and the devil.

These resources paid special attention to the expected reaction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. On the one hand, they distributed a video of Azov fighters burning Trump's books in protest against his plan to end the war. The video appears to be was staged, and there is no other evidence of such a flash mob in open sources. On the other hand, the same channels, citing the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), claimed: after the election of the politician, the Ukrainian military began to surrender eight times more often. However, the corresponding video was falsified, but ISW has never provided such statistics.

A variety of public figures (from the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova to the former editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow Alexei Venediktov) also reported, that shortly after Trump’s election he was removed from the database of the “Peacemaker” website. These statements were based on a fake screenshot of this portal that circulated in 2018, where Trump appeared, and the impossibility - in this context, absolutely logical - of finding him in the database now. 

Finally, propagandists portrayed Trump's victory as a harbinger of an imminent stoppage of aid for Ukraine. For example, they, with reference to The Wall Street Journal, told how US Vice President-elect J.D. Vance twice refused a telephone conversation with Ermak, but the reputable newspaper never didn't publish relevant news. Also, shortly after the elections, it went viral on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. fake screenshot a tweet from billionaire Elon Musk, who is close to Trump: he allegedly published a dollar bill on which the politician showed his middle finger, with the caption “The last dollar for Zelensky.”

Ukrainian traces are everywhere

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials have accused the authorities, intelligence, or ordinary residents of the neighboring country of involvement in almost all crimes on Russian territory. And if in some cases - like arson of military registration and enlistment offices or murders General Igor Kirillov - this at least sounds plausible, in most others it looks like nothing more than shifting responsibility to a “convenient” suspect instead of searching for the true culprits.

Thus, in March, shortly after the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the nation stated about the Ukrainian trace in that attack. According to him, in an attempt to escape, the suspects moved towards Ukraine, where “a window was prepared for them” to cross the border. In April, the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation spoke about Kyiv’s involvement in the terrorist attack. Igor Krasnov, and in May - head of the FSB Alexander Bortnikov. However, no convincing evidence has been presented over the past months, and the largest terrorist attack on Russian territory in 20 years has fallen off the agenda—Putin even didn't mention him at the traditional final press conference.

Statements by officials about Ukrainian involvement in the attack on Crocus supported and propagandists - for example, the RIA Novosti agency, citing a hitherto unknown Tajik military expert Bakhtiyor Rakhmonov, said that the Ukrainian embassy in Tajikistan for several weeks before the terrorist attack recruited local residents into the International Legion, and the mercenaries recruited in this way allegedly attacked the concert hall. The publication referred to a screenshot of a post by the diplomatic mission on Facebook, which by that time had been circulating on Telegram for 24 hours and, as it turned out, was highly likely to have been faked.

A similar method was used to prove the Ukrainian trace in events in third countries. For example, when protests broke out in Georgia after the authorities’ decision to suspend negotiations on joining the European Union, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and media distributed a screenshot of an advertisement allegedly posted on one of the Ukrainian job search portals. Its author was looking for “strong guys” with experience in participating in rallies to be sent to Tbilisi. The basis of the forgery was an advertisement published a few days earlier about the search for a security guard in Chernigov.

Ukrainians were allegedly involved in the attempted murder of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in May. “Moskovsky Komsomolets”, “Arguments and Facts” and other publications claimed: the wife of the writer Juraj Cintula, who shot the politician, is a refugee who was in contact with the Ukrainian special services and incited her husband to attack the pro-Russian head of the Slovak government. Such allegations were refuted by both local investigative authorities and acquaintances of the couple interviewed by journalists. Judging by the available documents, Tsintula’s wife lived in Slovakia, if not her whole life, then at least for several decades, and nothing is said about her Ukrainian origin in open sources.

Two months later, according to Z-channels, an assassination attempt on another pro-Kremlin European leader, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was foiled. It was statedthat a refugee from Ternopil was supposed to plant an explosive device in the politician’s car, and the evidence was an intercepted conversation between the performer and Ukrainian intelligence. True, Russian resources reported this with reference to the fake website of the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Demokrata, and the audio recording published there was generated by AI.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are engaged in looting in the Kursk region. Foreigners participate in battles with them

After the Ukrainian military entered the territory of the Kursk region on August 6, propagandists began to actively spread messages about alleged war crimes of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Russian region. Some Telegram channels directly wrote: “Russians steal washing machines and toilets,” they said. Now it’s clear why they said it - to cover up their own marauding inclinations,” referring to numerous publications about the plunder of occupied cities by the Russian military.

One of the first stories to appear was that the Ukrainian Armed Forces had allegedly taken ancient icons and started selling them on Ukrainian sites. These publications were based on real advertisements, which (including before the start of the operation in the Kursk region) were posted by residents of different cities of Ukraine and in which the text was edited by fake makers.

A significant role in the dissemination of such statements is played by the Telegram channel “Ukropsky Fresh”, which specializes on falsification of messages from Ukrainian authorities, police, prosecutors, charitable organizations and the military. In particular, anonymous bloggers began distributing screenshots of posts about the murder of civilians in Ukraine (fake it was said already about the execution of residents of the Kursk region who resisted) and about the delivery of a washing machine to the Ukrainian Armed Forces unit (in versions “Ukropsky fresh” was stolen in the same Russian region).

Let us note that there is no independent and reliable information about what is happening in the occupied territory of the Kursk region. Although the Armed Forces of Ukraine organize press tours for foreign journalists, one cannot be completely sure that the reporters are shown an objective picture. Various publications citing eyewitnesses reportedthat facts of looting are recorded in populated areas under the control of both the Russian and Ukrainian military. In any case, at least some of the evidence distributed on the Internet is deliberately false.

When talking about the events in the Kursk region, propagandists used another a long-established method — a video assembled from stock photos and videos posted in the public domain, they passed off as content from a major foreign publication. True, in this case, the focus of the fake makers’ attention turned out to be quite unusual: they decided to register in the style of the Colombian media, two videos telling about the death near Kursk of a relative of the singer Shakira and a descendant of the drug lord Pablo Escobar. And although some Hispanics do serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, these two stories were falsified.

Foreign officers and instructors are constantly dying in Ukraine

The Kremlin, the Russian Ministry of Defense, officials and propagandists often talk about foreign mercenaries and instructors fighting on the side of Ukraine. IN various units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine really consist hundreds of volunteers from other countries, and some of them Russian troops even captured. However, propagandists do not miss the chance to confirm the Kremlin’s thesis about the war not with Ukraine, but with NATO and talk about the deaths of high-ranking officers or dozens of career military personnel from the alliance countries at the front.

The most primitive of these fakes are based on the simplest manipulation - when one of the Western countries reports the sudden death of a high-ranking military man, Z-channels claim that he actually died as a result of a Russian strike on Ukraine. Examples include the Polish general Adam Marczak and Canadian Lieutenant Colonel Kent Miller, who died this year in Belgium. According to pro-Kremlin resources, they were killed in Chasovoy Yar and near Sumy, respectively, but this is not confirmed by any (including official Russian) sources.

In some cases, doctored social media posts are used as evidence. Thus, after the September missile attack on Poltava, which, according to Kyiv, killed more than 50 Ukrainian soldiers, Z-channels reported that instructors from Sweden were among the victims, and local children were forced to donate blood for wounded foreigners. Such publications were based on screenshots of posts posted on Facebook by a Swedish volunteer and a Ukrainian doctor. Both of them were tampered with. A similar fake spread a month and a half later - this time the wife of an American pilot allegedly complained on social networks that her husband was killed (and several F-16 fighters were destroyed) as a result of a Russian strike on an airfield in the Khmelnitsky region. In this case, the fake makers not only falsified a post on Facebook, but created a fake profile a real girl. 

In the spring, propagandists reacted especially actively (and absurdly) to the statement of French President Emmanuel Macron, who expressed his readiness to send his military to Ukraine. "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" and "Komsomolskaya Pravda" claimedthat in early May, about 100 soldiers of the French Foreign Legion were transferred to Slavyansk. The absurdity lies not so much in the fact that this information was based on sources from an anonymous military Telegram channel and French conspiracy theorists, but in the fact that such publications clarified: fighters from a unit stationed in South America and providing security for the French Kourou cosmodrome went to Ukraine.

However, this did not stop supporters of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a couple of days later they began distributing photos of coffins with French soldiers allegedly killed in Ukraine. Actually a photo was done four and a half years earlier - at a farewell ceremony for military personnel who died during the anti-terrorist operation in Mali.

Church schism and bullying of the UOC

In August the Verkhovna Rada accepted a law that actually prohibits the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) of the Moscow Patriarchate on the territory of the country. The churches subordinate to it are pushing to move to the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). Russian propagandists have been speculating on the topic of church schism in a neighboring country for several years, and they have been using fake news for this purpose for several years.

First of all, pro-Kremlin channels are constantly trying to convince their audience that the OCU, independent of Moscow, are atheists seeking to humiliate the “competing” church. Shortly after the adoption of the high-profile law, Channel One showed footage allegedly filmed in the former UOC church in Vinnitsa, which was reorganized into a nightclub. But in reality the videos were withdrawn five years ago in one of the entertainment establishments in Warsaw. A similar story was told about a church in Lutsk, which was allegedly turned into a laundry. It was based on the news of 2023, when a social laundry really opened in the utility room of the local Greek Catholic (not Orthodox) church.

However, as described by propagandists, persecution is not limited to the institution of the church itself or individual churches, but also extends to parishioners. Thus, after the adoption of a high-profile law, a video went viral in which a priest of the OCU in Chernivtsi allegedly refused to perform the funeral service for dead Ukrainian soldiers baptized in the UOC. Original video was removed back in 2023 - in it the priest of the UOC refuses to conduct a funeral service together with the chaplains of the OCU.

Foreign media refuse to talk about Ukraine, and even openly mock its residents

Towards the end of the year, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels published several fakes at once, designed to show that the largest foreign (primarily American) media, by the end of the third year of a full-scale war, were so tired of covering it that anti-Ukrainian statements from their own employees were constantly being broadcast. Leading then laughing after the story about the losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, then complain for constant discussion of Ukraine, then mockingly humming Christmas song after the news about the eviction of refugees from social housing in France, then show in a show about a tattoo with the phrase “Ukraine is crap.” However, all these videos were edited, and they were based on fragments of various programs published several years ago.

However, this is not the first time this method of creating fakes has been used, and not only to confirm the narrative that Western society is tired of the war in Ukraine. For example, in December, an alleged fragment of an NBC broadcast from the opening ceremony of Notre Dame Cathedral after restoration went viral. When Macron greeted Zelensky, the American TV channel allegedly advertised show “Great Thieves of the 21st Century,” thus clearly hinting at the corruption of the Ukrainian leader. This time, the corresponding video was also edited, and the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel was behind the fake news.

Cover photo: collage “Checked”