On the anniversary of the annexation of Crimea, Russian institutions of public diplomacy in Poland, namely the “Russian houses” in Gdansk and Warsaw, distributed propaganda rhetoric on their official pages on social networks.

Analysts of the Polish project Demagog drew attention to this. In particular, they found reposts of a mini-rally on the occasion of congratulations for Russia on the “reunification of Crimea” from the Polish people on the Facebook pages of “Dom” (House). They say that the Poles really support Russia and have long recognized Crimea as part of Russia. However, the video that was distributed on these pages shows that only a few people can be found at the “rally”.

“Russian houses” is an institution aimed at spreading Russian culture and language abroad. However, since it is directly subordinate to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, its rhetoric coincides with that of the department. The case involving the annexation of Crimea is not alone. Specialists from the same Demagog project also talked about how the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine were called Russian ones on the official accounts of “Russian houses” in social networks. Thus, the propagandists want to try to legitimize the violation of international law, which is in fact the temporary occupation of Ukrainian lands.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has placed a number of Russian financial institutions under international sanctions, making it more difficult to receive or send funds from Russia. This issue is especially relevant for Russians living in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. However, Telegram helps them bypass financial restrictions by providing a platform for money transfers from and to Russia without the participation of banks under sanctions.

Analysts of the site investigaci.cz found out how this scheme works in the Czech Republic. According to their findings, there are anonymous channels on Telegram, where people who have crypto wallets offer their services as live intermediaries and at the same time exchangers. After an agreement with the sender and a transaction through a crypto wallet, a special person receives the funds, exchanges them for the desired currency and personally gives this money to the recipient only after he or she says a special password. The transfer fee is low as intermediaries earn funds on the scheme due to the special exchange rate. According to Transparency International, about $400,000 was withdrawn this way.

All participants in this scheme choose Telegram because of its anonymity and the lack of strict monitoring of financial transactions. This scheme is not the only one on Telegram that helps Russians bypass sanctions. For example, in the messenger one can find a bot that helps Russians buy a subscription to Spotify, which stopped working in Russia in response to the outbreak of a full-scale war against Ukraine.

Propagandists are constantly spreading information that allegedly neighboring countries of Ukraine from its western border are preparing to attack and occupy part of it. If earlier anonymous one-time accounts were used for this, now pro-Russian bloggers are also spreading such rhetoric.

Analysts of the NotaYenota project drew attention to this tendency. They noticed that in the network of telegram channels spreading Russian rhetoric, there were more messages that Romania and Poland were already preparing to occupy Ukraine, and the local population was only happy about this. Like, why does Ukraine need evil Europe which divided it. NotaYenota specialists also claim that such activation occurred simultaneously with the launch of targeted advertising for materials with a similar message.

In this way propagandists want to again divert attention from the crimes of the Russians and shift responsibility for them to other forces. Like, Russia allegedly cares about the Ukrainians, and Europe is only looking for an opportunity to stab in the back and betray Ukraine. This is not the first time that Russians have resorted to such a message. Detector Media has already investigated the danger of the narrative that Poland is allegedly going to occupy the Ukrainian western part.

Propagandists spread the information that the National Gallery in London intends to remove from the exhibition a portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife, painted by Jan van Eyck in 1434. Allegedly, visitors to the gallery are outraged that the person in the picture looks like Russian President Volodymyr Putin. It's fake.

Reuters fact-checkers drew attention to this trend. They received a comment from the gallery speaker, who said that there are no plans to remove the painting from the exhibition now, since there are no complaints about it either. It is impossible to find any press releases for the removal of the picture, nor public calls for such actions.

The propagandists want to show in this way that Europe is choking on absurd russophobia. Like, in their blind hatred for Russia and everything Russian, Europeans stick to everything in a row. Detector Media has already described a particular vision of “russophobia” propagated by propagandists.

On March 18, in the Polish city of Kielce, a conference “Does war threaten us?” (Czy grozi nam wojna?) was held. The event was broadcast live on YouTube, and the speakers were those who have been spreading pro-Russian rhetoric in the Polish information space for a long time. Specialists of the Polish project Demagog highlighted the most important anti-Ukrainian messages from the conference.

1 Yanukovych was stripped of power in an anti-democratic way

One of the speakers noted that allegedly the ex-president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych was deprived of power contrary to the principles of democracy, and one should not call him a usurper or a dictator. To prove his thesis, he says that in 2010 Yanukovych was elected in elections that were held “according to all democratic standards”.

Propagandists thus again want to discredit Euromaidan and its influence on Ukrainian society. Like, this is a coup d'etat, which was organized by Washington to bring Ukraine to the brink. However, one of the reasons for the start of Euromaidan was the laws and decisions of Yanukovych, which went against public opinion, and protest is an important element of democratic processes in Europe, especially in Ukraine.

2. Ukraine will no longer return Crimea, and Kyiv started the war in Donbas

At the conference, the opinion was also voiced that the future of Ukraine was supposedly very vague, and the Russians made sure that Crimea remained “in their hands”.

Thus, propagandists want to legitimize and justify the illegal actions of Russia. Like, why does Ukraine need Crimea if it itself is falling apart? However, it was Russia that destabilized the region with its actions and illegally annexed Crimea and other temporarily occupied territories. It was Russia that also started the war in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, hiding behind the “protection of the Russian-speaking population” of these regions.

3. Kyiv regime forbids Ukrainians to speak Russian

The speakers of the event argued that Ukrainians from Donbas are afraid that “they are forced to learn a new language, that children will now speak Ukrainian ... They want a referendum”.

Through this message, propagandists want to demonize the Ukrainian authorities and justify Russia's crimes by “protecting the Russian-speaking population”. However, in addition to the fact that the Ukrainian language has always been the only state language, and Ukrainian legislation does not impose restrictions on the language of everyday communication, Russia arranges air attacks mainly on cities and regions where the use of the Russian language is common.

4. Everyone was silent when Ukraine bombed Donbas for 8 years

At the conference, one could also hear that “for 8 years, people living in the Donbas were often bombed, fired upon, and no one somehow wept over the fate of those children who died in schools…”. They say that this did not bother anyone in Ukraine and Poland, and Kyiv fired at these people.

This message is a classic example of Russian disinformation. Thus, the propagandists want to justify the crimes of the Russians. It seems that a full-scale war against Ukraine is revenge for the suffering of the inhabitants of Donbas. However, it was not Ukraine, but Russia that started hostilities there in 2014 and is ruthlessly destroying the territory of the region.

5. The war against Ukraine is part of a major plan of the world government, and very soon Ukraine and Poland will turn into “Ukropolin”.

The speakers of the event said that the war was started in order for Europe to start building “New Jerusalem, Heavenly Jerusalem, Crimean California, New Khazaria, Ukropolin”. Moreover, as proof of these words, they claim that the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, has already stated that Poland and Ukraine will allegedly unite into one state.

In this case, the propagandists turn to the now popular conspiracy theories to shift the responsibility for the crimes of the Russians to someone else. Like, these are all the tricks of the world government, and we are all just hostages of political games. In the answer above, one can also see anti-Semitic overtones: according to conspiracy theorists, the world government consists of Jews and in this way they take revenge for all the bad things that happened to them before. However, if to talk about Duda’s speech, which the speakers refer to, it is about the speech of May 3, 2022, where, within the full context, one can understand that the Polish president is talking about the amount of assistance to Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees. Moreover, in this speech, he even emphasizes that Poland will help “the restoration of Ukraine: strong, sovereign, independent”.

““Foreign mercenaries” are NATO envoys”, “Russia is fighting against the West” - such messages are promoted by Russian propaganda in relation to foreign fighters who have come to the defense of Ukraine. They say that everything is bad in Ukraine, there is no one to fight, and therefore they recruit “mercenaries”.

However, Russian propaganda substitutes the concept and calls the foreign legion mercenaries. The Foreign Legion is legally part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the exact number of its members is not reported, like all other fighters. Accordingly, propaganda wants to downplay the importance of the Ukrainian army, opposing it to the so-called mercenaries, who allegedly outnumber them on the battlefield. At the same time, Moscow equates “mercenaries” with criminals in the context of Ukraine. However, mercenaries are really fighting on the part of Russia, for example, the Wagner group.

In general, the term “mercenary” means that a person participates in a war, but is not part of the armed forces of a particular country. Mercenaries are usually recruited by third parties and are subsequently paid for their work. Article 47 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949 states that the mercenary is guided by the basic principle of receiving a monetary reward that is significantly higher than the remuneration of fighters of the same rank officially included in the armed forces. So, Russian propaganda is trying to show that Ukraine is recruiting foreigners to fight for it. However, the International Legion is a military unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in which only military volunteers serve.

The propagandists claimed that the military from the EU countries fought on the territory of Ukraine even before the full-scale invasion, or that the number of foreigners in the Ukrainian army would soon exceed 50%. Thus, propaganda wants to create an appearance that is actually at war not with Ukraine, but with the so-called “collective West”. Analysts of Detector Media in their study analyzed the tactics by which Russian propaganda forms the image of a “foreign mercenary” in Ukraine.

Propagandists are spreading a video that allegedly in the morning program of the American CBS television channel, during a report on a new concept for toilets that allow one to spend less time in the toilet, they accidentally included footage with President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi, from which the host of the program starts to laugh. It's fake.

Analysts of the MythDetector project drew attention to it. They claim that in the video that propagandists are distributing, footage with Zelenskyi was added over the original video due to editing. In the original version, there is no video with the President of Ukraine at all, and the presenter starts laughing after the remark that new toilets will save the lives of millions of people. This news program aired on December 19, 2019 on the Boston Regional affiliate of the CBS News network and was hosted by Diana King Hall.

In this way, propagandists want to once again raise doubts about the sincerity of American support and personally discredit Zelenskyi. Like, why does one need such a president, even if they laugh at him during reports about toilets. This is far from the first personal attack by propagandists against the President of Ukraine. Detector Media has repeatedly debunked fake covers of foreign media, where Volodymyr Zelenskyi is allegedly ridiculed.