Following the recently adopted bill No. 8371 on the ban on the activities of religious organizations with a governing center in Russia, propagandists have spread information that a church in Lutsk was seized from the UOC and has already been turned into a laundry. As evidence, the authors of the fake add a corresponding photograph.

In fact, this information is not true. Using Google's reverse image search function, it was possible to find out that the photo of the church distributed by propagandists appeared online back in November 2023. And it was taken not in Lutsk, but in the Ternopil region. At that time, the first social laundry was opened in Terebovlia with the support of the Caritas-Ternopil charity foundation. The local city council reported that they opened it in the premises of the parish, which became the winner of a mini-grant within the framework of the project “Development of social service to unite communities to support IDPs and vulnerable groups at the parish level”, operating with the support of CNEWA Canada and Renovabis.

“Today, social laundry is a very relevant service. Because people from dangerous regions of the country come to our community with almost nothing, only some personal belongings. And often such people do not have the opportunity to buy a washing machine for themselves”, said Oleh Prodan, the mayor of Terebovlia.

With this fake, propagandists are trying to discredit the law banning the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine and show that Ukrainians are sinners and atheists. Russians call their church “true” and threaten that “sinners” will be held accountable for their actions in another world.

Read on Censor.NET: How conspiracy theorists explain events in Ukraine and the world: The theory of “church persecution in Ukraine”

After the adoption of bill No. 8371 in August 2024 on the ban on the activities of religious organizations whose leadership center is located in the aggressor country, Russian propagandists began to spread more disinformation about the religious situation in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Crisis Media Center has highlighted recent key messages on this topic.

“Data on Ukrainians’ support for the ban on the UOC (MP) is fake”

In fact, according to a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in April 2024, 83% of Ukrainians believed that the state should interfere in the activities of the UOC to some extent. In particular, according to 63% of respondents, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church should be completely banned in Ukraine. That is, Ukrainians, on the contrary, express significant support for the relevant measures.

“Pope Francis has sharply condemned the Church's law”

The Pope did comment on the new Ukrainian law on the activities of religious organizations linked to Russia. However, his words were different from those cited by propagandists. Pope Francis stated that “not a single Christian church should be abolished in Ukraine”. He expressed concern about religious freedom, but did not “harshly condemn” the law, as Russian sources claim.

It should be noted that the Vatican seeks to maintain dialogue with all parties, including Moscow. This often leads to cautious formulations that are distorted by propagandists.

“There is a persecution of religion in Ukraine”

In reality, Ukraine is taking action against religious organizations associated with the aggressor country, not against religion in general. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is historically linked to the Russian Orthodox Church and has proven ties to Russia. A study by the State Service for Ethnopolicy and Freedom of Conscience found that the UOC remains an organization centered in Russia. Therefore, the ban on religious organizations with a leadership center in the aggressor country is aimed at preventing foreign interference through these institutions, not at “persecuting believers”.

“All who are for are enemies, all who are against are friends”

Boxer Oleksandr Usyk, once “praised” by Russian propagandists as a “bearer of the Orthodox faith”, has supported Ukraine's policy of countering Russian influence. The propagandists' messages are now aimed at discrediting Usyk as a person who allegedly changes his beliefs and actions depending on circumstances and influence, thereby undermining his authority among the audience.

Read also: After nine months, the parties will only take up positions for battle. How the law banning religious organizations linked to Russia will work – MediaSapiens – Detector Media.

Russian sources are distributing a video allegedly from the BBC, which states that Ukrainian servicemen used Nazi symbols (including slogans and gestures) more than 1,000 times during the Kursk operation. This study was conducted by the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The organization's Director of Advocacy and Strategic Litigation, Antoine Bernard, allegedly called on the international community to pay attention to the glorification of Nazism in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “A country that demands protection in the UN has no right to treacherously violate the organization's resolutions, much less display symbols of cannibalistic regimes”, Bernard said, according to the propagandists.

In fact, neither the BBC nor Reporters Without Borders reported the results of the corresponding study. This is what journalists from the StopFake project write. The video is not available on the website or social networks of the British media.

The latest Ukraine-related posts on the Reporters Without Borders website condemn the Russian strike on Kramatorsk that killed two Reuters journalists and expose the Kremlin propaganda network founded by Yevhenii Pryhozhyn.

Ukraine also recently joined the International Partnership for Information and Democracy, launched by the organization. Antoine Bernard, whose fake quote the propagandists used in their video, praised the decision and said that Ukraine “demonstrates a global commitment to reliable and quality information, which is essential for the proper functioning of democracy”, despite the trials of war.

StopFake journalists add that most reports about the use of Nazi symbols by Ukrainian military personnel are Russian provocations.

Read also: New fakes about the operation in Kursk

Pro-Russian sources, citing Fox News, CNN and the New York Post, are spreading the “news” that in the American city of Arlington, where the Pentagon is located, graffiti has appeared depicting an F-16 aircraft lost in Ukraine and the caption: “Is this what we pay for?” The work is attributed to street artists OSGEMEOS. The propagandists add that the artists wanted to draw attention to the irrational spending of American taxes to provide weapons to Ukraine.

In fact, this “news” is not true, writes the StopFake project. Screenshots from the media that allegedly spread information about the graffiti are fake. A search on the websites of Fox News, CNN and the New York Post for the headlines given in the publication yielded no results. Also, no other authoritative media published the corresponding news.

There is no photo of this graffiti on the website or Instagram page of Brazilian street artists OSGEMEOS. It is also worth noting that the works of brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, who are behind the OSGEMEOS project, have a different visual style, completely different from the graffiti from F-16. Their graffiti usually depict surreal scenes, rather than commenting on current political events.

Recall that one of the F-16 fighters crashed on August 26, 2024. The pilot of the plane, Oleksii “Moonfish” Mes, died in the crash. During his last combat sortie, the military man managed to destroy three cruise missiles and one attack drone. The investigation is clarifying the causes of the incident and is considering a number of versions. The previously put forward assumption that the F-16 could have been shot down by friendly fire from a Patriot complex is considered unlikely by US military officials interviewed by The New York Times.

With such fakes, Russia is trying to spoil relations between Ukraine and its Western partners in order to cast doubt on the need to provide military assistance. Earlier, Detector Media refuted information that Ukrainian refugees in Wroclaw created graffiti saying “Our Father Bandera - children, do not learn it in Polish, but learn it in Ukrainian”.

Recently, the Polish segment of the TikTok social network has stepped up the distribution of anti-Ukrainian materials, the Center for Countering Disinformation reports.

Among the large number of TikTok accounts duplicating narratives in line with Russian propaganda, the following can be highlighted:

Martwyobywatel – the profile contains many videos discrediting Ukrainian refugees, as well as videos directed against the Ukrainian language. Narratives about the “Ukrainization of Poland” and the “displacement” of Polish culture by Ukrainians are spread here.

19_illegal_06 (SIEWCA_PRAWDY) – the page spreads anti-Ukrainian messages and memes to humiliate Ukrainians and discredit the Ukrainian political leadership. They fuel the narrative of the “Banderization of Poland” and promote hatred towards Ukrainian refugees.

Asherbur (Asher Burov-Şǔraev) – the page is run by a Russian citizen who lived in Lublin and now probably lives in Israel. The profile publishes videos on the topic of resistance to the “Ukrainization of Poland”, and also tries to portray Ukrainians in the worst possible light. There are also videos praising Putin and justifying Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Polakpatriotaa – the profile contains narratives that are beneficial to Russia, directed against the Polish leadership, EU politicians and Ukrainians. Some publications by the account's authors try to intimidate Poles with the possibility of Poland's participation in the war against Russia. They spread the slogan “This is not our war” and call not to help Ukraine.

Previously, we wrote about how far-right movements in EU countries use TikTok to support Russian propaganda messages.

The administrators of one of the anonymous Telegram channels complained that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation blocked the site they created for a foreign audience. On it, propagandists in six languages spread Russian propaganda, especially about Russian attacks on civilians and critical infrastructure in Ukraine. The administrators called it a “crime against freedom of speech” and an attempt to “shut the mouths” of everyone who “tells the truth” about the events in Ukraine. They say that the fact that the FBI blocked them confirms that they are “on the right track”.

In reality, however, blocking the site is an important step in the fight against disinformation, not a restriction on free speech. Instead of providing “objective information”, as the site’s authors claim, it has been manipulating facts in an attempt to justify Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and discredit the actions of Western countries supporting Ukraine in the war. Disinformation spread by sites like this undermines international security, incites hatred, and destabilizes the situation.

The US actions are aimed at protecting truthful information and preventing the influence of fake news that threatens public order and security. Blocking such resources helps reduce the influence of propaganda campaigns aimed at distorting real events and misleading people.

The FBI has uncovered one of the Kremlin's largest networks for spreading disinformation and propaganda. This was reported by the Telegram channel Ukrainian Offensive based on a published document prepared by federal agents to support a lawsuit to confiscate a number of Internet domains. It describes an extensive network of clone sites and one-day news resources, such as the fictitious BBC California. The agents also managed to identify and translate into English Russian guidelines for bots and distributors of fake information.

According to their information, the network is headed by one of the most influential Kremlin officials, Serhii Kyryienko, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation. With the help of organizations such as ANO Dialog and the Institute for Internet Development, Russia has created a huge network of sites-clones of large media outlets in different languages. These sites publish fictitious news along with copies of real materials, creating the impression that the source is reliable. The methods pay special attention to the dissemination of fake information in the Ukrainian language with reference to Ukrainian resources, emphasizing the importance of the language issue. The network does not even limit itself to publishing materials that are unfavorable for the Russian Federation, since the main goal is to create the illusion of division and polarization of society.

Researchers at the Detector Media Research Center have joined the Alliance4Europe report, created by an international group of disinformation experts, which provides information on how Operation Doppelganger continues to operate, especially on social media.

Russian propaganda continues to produce new fakes about the events in the Kursk region. The Center for Countering Disinformation has discovered another wave of false publications aimed at discrediting Ukraine.

“Ukrainian Nazism”. One of the fakes concerns a supposedly British TV channel, which counted 1000 cases of the use of Nazi symbols by Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region. This is a completely fabricated story, since no British media resource has published such information. The purpose of this fake is to reinforce old Kremlin narratives about the “Nazi” character of the Ukrainian army and to create an image of an enemy that allegedly poses a threat to civilization.

“Torture of Russian prisoners”. This is a fake video in which Ukrainian soldiers are accused of abusing Russian prisoners. Such materials have repeatedly proven to be fakes, and they are aimed at demoralizing the Ukrainian military and justifying the cruelty of the Russian army. It is also supposed to intimidate Russian soldiers so that they do not surrender.

“Stolen Headphones”. Propagandists are spreading a story about looting by Ukrainian soldiers, claiming that a “resident of the Kursk region” allegedly tracked her stolen headphones to the Sumy region. This fake is aimed at creating a negative image of the Ukrainian military, but there is no evidence to support its veracity.

“Training of the military in school”. The enemy claims that Ukrainian military personnel were trained in a school in the Zhytomyr region for operations in the Kursk region. This information is part of a strategy aimed at destabilization and preparation of the information base for possible missile strikes on peaceful targets.

“Civilian atrocities”. Russian media are spreading “testimonies of refugees” from Kursk, where they accuse Ukrainians, without evidence, of mass murder and abuse of civilians. The propaganda fabrication even mentions the French flag raised by “foreign mercenaries”. This is another attempt to denigrate the Ukrainian Armed Forces and frighten both the Russian population and the international audience.

Propagandists are distributing a photo of an allegedly official document on anonymous Telegram channels, which talks about punishing relatives of those evading mobilization in Ukraine. It is noted that the document was signed by the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal.

The Center for Countering Disinformation writes about this. After checking at the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, it was established that this document is a forgery. Its format does not meet editorial standards, since the Prime Minister does not write such letters, but issues instructions that have a different structure.

The document also contains grammatical errors, and the number indicated in it does not comply with the standards of the Cabinet of Ministers. It was also established that a document with such an original number does not exist at all in 2024.

This fake is aimed at creating panic among the population and discrediting Ukrainian state institutions. Propagandists use such fakes to undermine trust in the government, sow distrust among citizens and increase tension in society. By creating the illusion of helplessness of state structures and unfair persecution, the enemy is trying to break the morale of Ukrainians and weaken their resistance. This is also part of a wider information warfare campaign aimed at undermining unity and harmony in Ukrainian society.

Russian forces have announced a strike on a temporary deployment point of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the University of Sumy. One of the propaganda Telegram channels claims that a temporary deployment point for Ukrainian troops located in the building of the local university, where reserves were allegedly located for dispatch to the Kursk region, was allegedly destroyed in Sumy. However, this is a fake.

The Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security writes about this. The information in them does not correspond to reality. No Ukrainian military personnel were stationed in universities or dormitories near the front. The representative of the Operational-tactical grouping Kharkiv Colonel Vitalii Sarantsev emphasized that such reports are part of Russian propaganda aimed at justifying possible terrorist attacks on civilian objects and spreading fear among the population.

Also, the Prosecutor General's Office reported that a 64-year-old security guard was injured as a result of a bomb attack on one of the university buildings in Sumy. The Sumy Regional Prosecutor's Office has launched a pre-trial investigation into the violation of the laws and customs of war (Part 1 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

This is a typical Russian propaganda technique. Russia deliberately attacks civilian objects in Ukraine, committing acts of terror. Every time a Russian missile hits a hospital, school, shopping center or post office, propagandists claim that it was a “military object” or “Azov base”. In this way, the occupiers try to shift responsibility to Ukraine, claiming that “the Ukrainian Armed Forces allegedly use civilian objects and the population as a “human shield””.