In the Russian-language segment of social networks, a picture of a seemingly special issue of Charlie Hebdo magazine dedicated to Ukraine is being distributed. In the picture there is a geotag label with the inscription Kyiv on a black field and a signature in a bubble as in comics “So we have crossed over to the dark side of the force”.

The inscription refers to the inscription on President Zelenskyi's T-shirt, where was a call from Star Wars “Come to the Dark Side”, where the first letter in the word Dark was replaced by U, so that the slogan suggested going over to the side of UA.

In fact, Charlie Hebdo did not create such a cover, and this is easy to verify: the fake cover shows the release date and number: October 21, 2022, No. 1579. The magazine with this number came out on October 26, and its cover is dedicated to the far-right French politician Zemmour (and the Russian flag sticking out of the anus of a politician). The next issue came out on November 2, and it features Musk about to "fire the truth" on Twitter, giving the floor to former US President Donald Trump. But the picture of Kyiv in the dark was spread by dozens of Russian telegram channels with more than a hundred thousand subscribers.

This is not the first time that Russian propaganda has created fake Charlie Hebdo covers to convince the audience that Ukraine, its president and the suffering people are constantly laughed at in Europe. The editors even issued a special explanation, where they called the fakes of poor quality and promised to continue to fight Putin's madness.

The Center for Strategic Communications compiled a Newspeak Dictionary of Russian Propaganda, and using examples of several words and phrases from this dictionary, showed how Newspeak works.

According to experts, Newspeak colors the language ideologically and justifies repressions and wars of conquest. Thanks to it, the annexation of Crimea is transformed into “reunification”, and the occupation of Ukrainian lands with a full-scale invasion into “liberation”. It also smooths out the negative and diminishes the scale of failures at the front. Explosions become "pops", helicopters and planes do not fall but "fall on their sides" and "make a hard landing", collisions of ships become "rapprochements". And finally, the escape of Russian troops from the Kharkiv region turns into an "organized transfer of the Izium-Balakliia group to the territory of DNR".

Experts write that with the help of Newspeak the meanings of words change. The word "fake" in Russian propaganda now means not the false information, but information that does not come from the Russian authorities and state media.

Newspeak also penetrates the vocabulary of any Russian publications or politicians, even opposition ones. They also use the word "special operation", thereby removing from Putin the responsibility for unleashing a full-scale war and "unbracketing" the war crimes of the Russian army. They also use the names of "people's republics" as if they have sovereignty, thereby giving them legitimacy. Therefore, Newspeak is the same weapon of Russia in the information war as fakes and manipulations.

A fake is spreading in the Ukrainian segment of social networks that dozens of small explosive devices have been found in Lviv that can tear off a person’s limb. One of these pictures was shared almost 65,000 times.

In fact, as fact-checkers from StopFake write, no explosive devices were found in Lviv, this information was provided to journalists upon request by the Lviv police. It is interesting that the photo with the same subject is also distributed by Russian local media, in particular in Rostov. Most likely in the photo it is a broken electronic disposable cigarette without a case.

The Russian media are massively spreading information that Congressman Jamie Raskin allegedly called for the destruction of Russia because it is an Orthodox country with traditional values. And this is fake. Although it was not the Russian media that came up with it, but the American ones.

The fact that Raskin calls for a religious war against Russia, Orthodoxy and its traditional values, was said on the air of the FoxNews channel by host Tucker Carlson. And it was he who lied, since he is known for his commitment to Russia and has repeatedly disseminated manipulative theses. Here is the full text of Raskin's statement, but in short it sounds like this: Russia is the world center of corruption, totalitarianism, anti-feminism and violations of LGBT rights. At the same time, Ukraine is a democratic country that upholds the ideas of tolerance, human rights and freedoms. Therefore, it is clear to anyone, Democrat or Republican, why America should support Ukraine and do everything so that Russia loses this war.

In connection with an unsuccessful attempt to withdraw from the grain deal, Russia is urgently throwing several contradictory theses into the information space in order to confuse the audience and prevent them from asking a rational question: why, when Russia "withdrew" from the agreement, ships with Ukrainian grain continued to leave ports and deliver it to other countries?

In fact, after Ukraine, the UN and Turkey "informed Russia" that they would extend the agreement, despite Russian statements, the weakness of Russia's position was demonstrated to the whole world. It cannot blockade Ukrainian ports, it cannot destroy Turkish ships, and it cannot blackmail Ukraine again because of successes at the front, since now Russia is losing. Therefore, Russia was simply forced to "return" to the agreement and its propaganda had to somehow explain it to the audience.

The explanations are as follows: Ukraine gave written guarantees that it would not use the humanitarian corridor for military operations. But this is not true: Ukraine did not give additional guarantees. She gave them first and carried them out. But now Russian propaganda is forced to explain that "additional guarantees have been provided, but Russia still does not believe in any guarantees from Ukraine". And therefore reserves the right to "withdraw" from the agreement again, whenever it pleases.

The second explanation is that Russia has returned to fulfilling its obligations in order to prevent the West from "manipulating" that Russia provokes famine in the poorer countries of Asia and Africa, and thus win over the "global South". And to show that Russia is a stable and reliable partner”. And that is despite the fact that in the last 8 months Russia massively violated contracts, agreements, promises and even guarantees. It is unlikely that the reputation of a terrorist and an aggressor can be corrected by poor compliance with a single agreement.

Such a strategy looks especially disastrous against the backdrop of numerous statements by Russian officials who on November 1 stated that Russia's return to the grain agreement on the previous terms was never possible, and the next day the agreement started working again according to the same rules.

The Russian edition of RIA Novosti published an article entitled “Food is running out in Europe. It is Russia, of course, to blame”, which says that a food crisis will soon come in Europe. This is a common thesis of Russian disinformation, which has several modifications and waves of distribution. The last one is that the “famine” in Europe, predicted back in March, did not happen, and now it is being postponed until the next year, 2023.

In any case, there will be food in Europe but it will rise in price due to general inflation and fuel prices, and the range of goods may also be reduced due to the destruction of logistics. And Russia is really to blame for both, waging war against Ukraine that is a supplier of many types of agricultural crops, and the sanctions that Europe was forced to impose on Russia because of its invasion.

But Russian propaganda insists that politicians who did not want to get cheap gas from Russia will be to blame for the imaginary famine in Europe, although there will be no famine in Europe. But in the poorer countries of Asia and Africa it may happen. And that is why Russian propaganda constantly downplays this threat and generally invents a famine in Europe in order to shift the responsibility from Russia for the food crisis to other states.