Russian propagandists spread information that there was an outbreak of hepatitis A in Vinnytsia and note that “the reasons are simple - biolaboratories and destroyed medicine” in Ukraine. This is a fake.

As noted by the fact-checkers of the VoxCheck project, people with hepatitis A are indeed hospitalized in Vinnytsia, since October 16, 280 cases of infection have been recorded. However, the cause of the outbreak of this disease is currently being investigated, and the necessary measures are being taken. It was for this purpose that the team of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine headed by Ihor Kuzin arrived in Vinnytsia on October 28.

Outbreaks of hepatitis A are not a sign that medicine is “destroyed” in Ukraine, because such outbreaks were recorded in 2022 in the USA in the following states: California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington. In 2023, it occurred in California, Arizona, Minnesota, and North Dakota. And the cause of the outbreak was strawberries imported from Mexico.

Tetiana Bondarenko, deputy director of the Department of Health Care and Rehabilitation of the Regional Military Administration, reported that the situation is under control. Moreover, the Vinnytsia region received from the Ministry 1,060 doses of vaccine for vaccinations of doctors involved in the elimination of the outbreak, and 1,100 doses of vaccine for vaccination of children. And if necessary, the necessary amount of vaccines from other regions will be redirected to Vinnytsia. This fact shows that the health care system works in Ukraine.

Russian propaganda systematically spreads fakes about biolaboratories in Ukraine. In this way, propagandists are trying to sow panic among Ukrainians, saying that biolaboratories are now not only harming Russians, but have also destroyed Ukrainian medicine. And as a result - diseases that cannot be cured. Earlier, we wrote about the manipulation that the authorities are destroying traces of US military biological laboratories in Odesa.

In the Ukrainian segment of the Facebook social network, an alleged poem by Taras Shevchenko is being spread, where he seems to predict the events of modern Ukraine: “The poor man cries, the rich man rejoices, and the government robs. Poor people bury sons killed in the war. A rich man who is full and proud makes a wedding”. However, there is no such poem in the works of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.

The case was investigated by fact-checkers of the Center for Countering Disinformation. Taras Shevchenko does not have such a poem, and it is not written in his style. This was pointed out by the Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko: “Style, damn, style: no matter how the Chekist rabble disguises itself, no matter how it forges a voice for itself, as in the fairy tale about the wolf and the kid, the style will definitely betray them”. In her opinion, “Shevchenko's fakes” are “concocted in the style of an illiterate graphomaniac and thrown into the network as if they belonged to the pen of Taras Shevchenko, with a postscript, to encourage the spreaders, in the spirit of “oh how relevant, indeed a prophet! [...]”.

The original source of the fake poem is the Solomia Ukrainets Facebook page, which is not the first time that it promotes disinformation, anti-Semitism and pro-Russian narratives. In 2018, the publication Chitomo wrote about this with reference to the research Opora.

In this way, Russian propaganda tries to destabilize Ukrainian society, discredit the Ukrainian government and incite a rebellion against it. This “fake poem” appears in posts accusing the authorities of devaluing the lives of Ukrainians almost at the same time as Russian fakes that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is calling for a military coup.

On November 7, 2023, the US State Department issued a press release titled “The Kremlin’s Efforts to Covertly Spread Disinformation in Latin America”, which revealed that the Russian government is funding a disinformation campaign using local media throughout Latin America. They are doing this in order to undermine support for Ukraine and at the same time spread sentiments against the USA and NATO among the Latin American audience. The main goal of Russian propagandists, according to the message, is to create an organic space for spreading propaganda in the Latin American space.

Media representatives of the online edition Espresso informed about the publication. In particular, the press release also noted that Moscow uses an extensive system of spreading false information: from websites to state media, in order to increasingly infiltrate Western discourse.

At the same time, the message of the State Department explained how such a disinformation campaign will work in general: first of all, they plan to organize a trained group of specialists of the editorial team, and the editorial board will be formed, for example,  by journalists and leaders of public opinion from the Latin American region. Subsequently, the team in Russia will create and send materials to the Latin American media for review, editing and appropriate final publication in local media. In addition, the Russian team anticipates that their materials will be “personalized” for the Latin American consumer — adding a local context and thus creating a specific plane for unobtrusively spreading pro-Kremlin narratives.

Among other things, translation technology from Russian to Spanish will be involved. Moreover, the translation will be carried out by a Russian specialist who is proficient in the Spanish language. Presumably, in order to prevent the loss of the main context in the messages, the Russian translator will maintain the mood required by the Kremlin.

This information was spread in the pro-Kremlin media. Reports say that the current Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Rustem Umierov, recently allegedly submitted a request to dismiss the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi. The authors of the publications refer to the Facebook post of Volodymyr Ariev, one of the people's deputies of Ukraine. However, this is not true.

On his pages in social networks, Rustem Umierov denied the fake: indeed, the People's Deputy posted information about the so-called resignation of Valerii Zaluzhnyi, but it does not correspond to reality and is not substantiated. In the end, the deputy referred to anonymous sources and did not provide any evidence. Later, Volodymyr Ariev deleted the publication on Facebook and apologized. But in another publication, he explained that he was deleting the post, because “currently, many sources say that this [submitting a petition to the Bid for dismissal] is not the case”.

In fact, Rustem Umierov confirmed on Facebook that it was a throw-in. But propaganda resources picked up the statement of the People's Deputy even before the publication was deleted and circulated it.

Let us remind you that earlier we documented a case in which we told how unknown people created a fake account of Valerii Zaluzhnyi in Telegram in order to spread messages of discrediting content.