Anonymous telegram channels broadcasting pro-Russian rhetoric are distributing a video on which the “canonical temple” of the UOC-MP in the village of Novopoltavka, Mykolaiv region, is allegedly on fire. Ukrainian nationalists are accused of setting fire to the temple, whose actions are comparable to Zelenskyi's allegedly anti-Orthodox policy.

Specialists from the Center for Counteracting Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council investigated this case and determined that the information being disseminated is not true. The burning church in the video is different from the one in Novopoltavka. In fact, this video depicts a fire in the Russian village of Illinka. It was made back in 2013, when the temple was burning there.

Propagandists use such fakes to sow religious enmity among Ukrainians and contribute to the division of society. This is not the first time Russian propaganda has been spreading disinformation on religious topics. Detector Media has already talked about the inventions of propaganda, that allegedly the United States guide Zelenskyi’s anti-Orthodox church policy, that crosses are allegedly blackened on the temple of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra because of “Ukrainian blasphemy”, or that the UN allegedly recognizes the oppression of the Orthodox Church.

The BBC Disinformation Team found that the UK-registered publication Yala News has Syrian roots and distributes content that reflects the theses of the Russian propaganda media.

BBC analysts tracked Yala News's most popular videos over the course of a year and found that many of them resonated with Russia-sponsored disinformation. Thus, Yala News reported on the US plans to use birds as a biological weapon to carry diseases to Russia, the staging of massacres of civilians in Bucha, Zelenskyi’s video message to Ukrainians allegedly intoxicated, and the flight of the Ukrainian military from the front line. All this news was first published in the Russian propaganda media, and after a few hours such videos appeared on Yala News.

The analysts also said that the Yala Group (the parent company of Yala News) is registered in central London at an address shared with more than 65,000 other firms. There are no physical offices or Yala Group employees there.

With the help of geolocation tools, the BBC team was able to find photos of employees and offices of the Yala Group on Facebook. They are located in the suburbs of Damascus. Most of the employees' social media profiles also show they are based in the Syrian capital. This information was confirmed by one of the former employees of the company.

The founder and CEO of Yala Group, Syrian businessman Ahmad Moemna, lives in Dubai. When asked by the BBC team about the presence of pro-Russian videos on Yala News, he replied that the content provided on this news resource is objective and impartial.

However, specialists in the study of Russian disinformation told the BBC that the timing of the distribution of news videos and their similarity to the Kremlin theses may indicate that Yala News is likely serving as a tool for disseminating Russian propaganda through foreign media, so as not to look like these theses come directly from the Kremlin.

Russia often tries to spread misinformation to international audiences. For example, Detector Media investigated what kind of disinformation narratives Russia is spreading in Eastern Europe in order to achieve political goals.

Finland is a neutral state, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it radically changed its status and became the 31st member of the largest military-political alliance. Now Russia borders NATO on the entire western border (except for Ukraine and puppet Belarus) and the Alliance controls the vast majority of the coast of the Baltic Sea. If Ukraine's desire to join NATO supposedly forced Russia to launch a preemptive strike through an invasion (first in 2014, then in 2022), then the real accession of neighboring Finland to the Alliance caused a much weaker reaction. Putin said that Moscow does not have such problems with Helsinki as with Kyiv. That is, there are no territorial disputes or other types of confrontations, which is why the reaction to Finland's entry into NATO is so soft. Such statements by the Kremlin sound like attempts to justify themselves and smooth things over. Russia reacted to Finland's accession to NATO with a number of propaganda messages, we have highlighted some of them.

1. Russian propagandists made a number of “strict remarks”. Allegedly, Finland has become a state unfriendly to Russia, so the Kremlin will “take military-technical measures” in response to NATO expansion. This message is intended to assure the domestic audience that Russia is ready for different scenarios. Allegedly, Russia is making a symmetrical (actually rather symbolic) retaliatory step. And although the border between NATO and Russia has doubled, if necessary, the Kremlin can fight back. But does a change in the geopolitical vector really mean an “anti-Russian turn”? Joining NATO is about own security and the security of the region, and not about hostility towards Russia.

2. Propagandists claim that Finland's membership in NATO means the loss of Finnish sovereignty and geopolitical weight. According to them, Finland has become one of the weak world players, which does not decide anything in international affairs. In fact, joining NATO means strengthening the defense capability, and collective security only reinforces the synergy and complementarity of the forces of the allies. Such remarks on the part of the Kremlin propagandists are an attempt to shift the attention and present the biggest problem of Moscow: the entry of a neighboring state into an unfriendly (according to Russia) military-political union is a problem of Finland itself.

3. Joining the Alliance will be costly for Finland. The key indicator of allied military spending reaches 2% of GDP, so the state’s economy will barely “pull” the defense budget, this will hit the pockets of ordinary Finns, Russian propaganda assures. After the start of Russian military aggression against Ukraine, NATO countries faced the need to increase defense spending, so the next summit in Vilnius may agree on a minimum level of defense spending for NATO members at the level of 2%, which was previously considered a desirable indicator. In fact, in 2022, Finland’s defense budget has almost reached the coveted mark of 1.96%, so the manipulation of the Russians looks unconvincing. Rather, this is another attempt to divert attention from the main issue - the fact of entry - from the topic of economics.

4. NATO does not plan to deploy its troops in Finland. Propaganda is trying to reassure that Russia has everything under control, and the actions of the Alliance on its eastern flank will be coordinated with the Kremlin. Again, this is a game for the domestic audience and an attempt to reassure the discouraged Russians, who were told that the next wave of NATO expansion to the east was unacceptable, but when it took place, the propaganda began to assure that nothing terrible had happened, because NATO soldiers in Scandinavia will not approach the Russian border.

5. Finland is in NATO, and Ukraine is led by the nose with promises. Like, Finland easily joined the Alliance, while Ukraine is on a thorny path because of the war, huge losses and unpopular reforms. Thus, Russian propaganda wants to devalue the Euro-Atlantic course of Ukraine and convince that Kyiv's hopes of joining NATO are useless. In reality, a state that is at war cannot be accepted into the organization, because this will automatically mean the activation of the fifth article of the Washington Treaty (an attack on any ally is regarded as an attack on the entire Alliance). In 2018, Ukraine was recognized as an aspiring country (a state intending to become a member of the Alliance). And in 2022, Ukraine announced that it was applying to join NATO, however, this document is purely political and has no legal significance. Despite this, Ukraine is a candidate for membership, and we have every chance to realize our intention after the final victory of Ukraine in the war.

This thesis is spread by pro-Russian telegram channels, referring to the American edition of the Washington Times. According to them, the Washington Times seems to be writing that the application of sanctions against Russia has led to a decrease in confidence in the dollar around the world, and therefore more and more countries are beginning to consider alternatives to the US currency as a reserve currency. The propagandists also claim that the world is in revolt against US financial imperialism. This is manipulation.

Specialists of the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council drew attention to the case. They highlighted several aspects of the Washington Times article that pro-Russian propagandists misrepresented. The text of the original says that China, Russia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Argentina and South Africa are looking for a new reserve currency, and not the whole world. The article also says that the sanctions caused panic only among the Russian financial community, that is, among countries that have a well-founded fear of falling under sanctions. In addition, the author of the Washington Times article uses the phrase “America's financial imperialism” in quotation marks.

By spreading this manipulation, propagandists are trying to discredit the US and establish the opinion that sanctions against Russia should be lifted. Detector Media has already reported on similar disinformation stories regarding sanctions against Russia. For example, about the destruction of the Western economy or the destruction of Europe's “economic sovereignty” as a result of anti-Russian sanctions.

The Kremlin websites disseminate information that in Ukraine, due to the war with Russia, there are allegedly almost no people of twenty years old left. Propagandists attribute this to “the West's order to Zelenskyi to fight to the last Ukrainian”. Like, precisely because the Ukrainians are forced to fight, the number of twenty-year-old boys and girls in Ukraine “has decreased by four in just a year”. It is not true.

Fact-checkers of the StopFake project investigated this case. They determined that the Russian propagandists were referring to “official statistics from the annual World Population Prospects published by the UN Secretariat”. Thus, Russian propaganda claims that last year in Ukraine there were about 200 thousand boys and 200 thousand girls of twenty years old, and this year's data show that in the age category of 21 years (these people are now 21 years old) there are only about 60 thousand boys and 50 thousand girls left.

However, the data presented in the World Population Prospects differ from the figures voiced by the propagandists. In 2023, about 133 thousand boys and 118 thousand girls aged 21 live in Ukraine, and not 60 and 50 thousand, respectively. And in 2021, when they were 19 years old, the number of boys was about 190 thousand, and girls - 180 thousand. That is, over the specified period, the number of young people in Ukraine has indeed decreased somewhat, but not by several times, as Russian propaganda claims. According to StopFake experts, the main reason for the decline in the population of Ukraine in 2022-2023 was emigration abroad due to Russia's armed aggression.

Russian propaganda spreads such fakes in order to discredit the Ukrainian authorities, demoralize Ukrainians and show the inexpediency of further resistance to Russia. They say that Ukraine is losing its youth because of the opposition to Russian aggression, and the authorities are not able to ensure the safety of their people. We note that this is not the first time Russia has manipulated figures on the population of Ukraine. Detector Media has already told how Russian propaganda counted Ukrainians by the amount of bread consumed and claimed that there are 5 million fewer Ukrainians every year.

Pro-Russian telegram channels are distributing a seemingly new cover of the French weekly Courrier International, in which Zelenskyi, with the words “Ukraine needs it more”, steals Easter eggs from French children. Like, the local taxpayers spend a lot of money on the whims of Zelenskyi to support Ukraine. However, this is not true.

According to experts from the Center for Counteracting Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council, the weekly Courrier International has never been published with such a cover. One can verify this by checking the official website of the publication. Another confirmation of the inauthenticity of the cover is that it was published in edition number 1692, although the edition with this number is planned to be released only on April 6, 2023.

This disinformation campaign is aimed at discrediting Ukraine and its President in the eyes of the world community. Let us recall that this is not the first time Russian propaganda has promoted fake covers to denigrate Zelenskyi's reputation. The French cartoon magazine “Charlie Hebdo”, the German satirical magazine “Titanic”, the American weekly “Newsweek”, the French magazine “FRANC-TIREUR” and others have already been used to spread such fakes.

Russian troops are experiencing failures on the battlefield. Incompetent command, corruption, divisions among the elites, resource problems, outdated technological capabilities - all this is faced by Russian soldiers at the front.

Because of these problems or the pressure of circumstances, time or leadership (and often all factors at the same time), entire echelons of Russian soldiers have nothing left but to flee in order to save their own lives, at least for some period. However, propagandists cannot say it the way it is. It is important for them to maintain the heroic image of the Russian armed forces. In addition, it holds on manipulating the essence of self-sacrifice. Like, a Russian soldier for the sake of the motherland is ready for anything: go through fire and water as well as sacrifice their life. Therefore, the Russian propaganda calls the flight of the Russian troops “regrouping”.

Moreover, using this wording, the propagandists want to create the illusion that Russia's steps are well thought out. It seems to be another move by major Russian strategists who outwitted the Ukrainians. In fact, such escapes are spontaneous and are due to the fact that the Ukrainian army is forcing the Russian military out of Ukrainian territories.