According to the Russian version of Wikipedia, “strike” (or second strike) is a nuclear strategy concept that means a massive nuclear retaliatory strike against an aggressor. However, Kremlin propaganda rather uses this term, as well as the phrase “retaliation operation”, not in a nuclear context. Moscow resorts to such rhetoric when it talks about shelling the territory of Ukraine with its “high-precision weapons”, supposedly in response to the “unprovoked” actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Thus, the Russian Ministry of Defense called the Russian massive missile attack on the temporary deployment points of Ukrainian Armed Forces units in Kramatorsk on the night of January 8, 2023, an “operation of retaliation”. As a result, they allegedly managed to eliminate more than 600 Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel. This Russian attack was a response to the “insidious attack of the Kyiv regime” on the vocational school building in Makiivka on the night of January 1, 2023, which resulted in the death of about 400 Russian military personnel.

However, Advisor to the then Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksii Kopytko said that Russia’s statement about a “retaliatory strike” is an IPSO. It was aimed at “killing the negative” from the attack on Makiivka. In this case, the Russians resorted to reflexive tactics. The information itself about the death of more than 600 Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers in Kramatorsk was fake - it was refuted by foreign media, the Ukrainian military leadership and even Russian “patriotic channels”.

The missile and drone attack on Mykolaiv and Odesa already on the night of July 18, 2023 was called by the Russian Ministry of Defense a “group retaliation strike” in response to the explosions on the Crimean Bridge the previous night. However, then military-political observer Oleksandr Kovalenko said that too little time had passed since the explosions on the Crimean Bridge (one day) for Russia to be able to prepare such an attack as a “retaliation strike”. In fact, the Kremlin gave it away as such. Cruise missiles and kamikaze drones, then flying towards two Ukrainian cities, had to be given coordinates and target objects, and a route built - this should have taken about 48 hours, Kovalenko added.

That is, after the Kremlin experiences any crushing blow, it resorts to rhetoric, saying, “we have everything under control” - this is a “strike of retaliation”. Thus, propagandists console the internal population of Russia, blur their eyes, and in fact cover up the defeat of the Russian army at the front with new so-called “achievements”.

Propagandists spreading pro-Russian rhetoric on social networks are distributing a video with the symbols of the British language corporation BBC, which claims that Ukraine allegedly spent $1.2 billion in 2023 to create fakes about the victories of the Ukrainian army at the front. The order, according to the video, was carried out by one of the largest PR companies in Britain. Propagandists claim that, as a result, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andrii Yermak, allegedly “refused to renew the contract for 2024 with the British”, since their activities “did not help in any way to increase the attractiveness of mobilization in Ukraine”. They say that the money went down the drain or “was stolen according to the old Ukrainian tradition”. The video claims that this information was discovered by the independent international research team Bellingcat. However, this is a fake.

Analysts from the StopFake project drew attention to it. They found that the BBC had never published such a video on its social networks. This video is likely fake. The attackers deliberately crystallized the logo of the British television company and their design for propaganda purposes. To create the video, footage from open sources was used (in particular, an image of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi and Andrii Yermak) and stock videos (in particular, with people in suits shaking hands). Propagandists used archival photographs of Ukrainian military personnel taken before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The portion of the video purported to be Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins talking about his “investigation” was taken from his #ConflictZone interview with DW (December 2022 issue), where Higgins is actually talking about the Russian disinformation against Ukraine and the activities of Russian spies in the West. Official information on Bellingcat resources also does not contain any information about the investigation that propagandists refer to. Previously, Higgins noted on his X (formerly Twitter) account that propagandists had already attributed false statements to Bellingcat several times.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, in order to cover up the war crimes of the Russian army in Ukraine and create a false impression among the world public about the failures of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the battlefield, Kremlin propaganda has been actively spreading the narrative that Ukraine is creating fake content about the war in Ukraine. They say that Ukraine lies to its citizens, which means there is no point in trusting it.

Users of social networks are again spreading information that the ex-husband of singer Kamaliya, Pakistani Mohammad Zahoor, bought fighter jets for Ukraine. However, this is a fake.

Specialists of the NotaYenota project drew attention to it. They found out that Zahur did not actually buy fighter jets for Ukraine. Kamaliya personally denied this information. This story begins with an interview with Kamaliya in 2022, where the singer stated that she received permission from Zahur to talk about the fact of providing two fighter jets to Ukraine, but without specific details. As it turned out, the singer was referring to military assistance from Pakistan. However, the quote is defaced on a number of websites and social networks, attributing to the Kamaliya man the acquisition of aircraft.

Project specialists drew attention to this situation due to the peculiarities of its reappearance in the Ukrainian media space. They found out that the fake was spread again in early January through one of the Facebook pages, which has more than 440 thousand subscribers. The comments to the message provide a link to the main article, and the domain name of the site distributing this fake is located in the .su zone - the national top-level domain for the former Soviet Union. Even after the Union ceases to exist, the SU domain remains Russian. They note that since 1993, the administrator of this domain has been the Russian Institute for the Development of Public Networks (RosNIRSM), located in Moscow. Since 2009, technical maintenance of this domain has been carried out by the Internet Technical Center, also in Moscow.

The most interesting thing is that the page distributing this stuff through .SU is administered by three persons located in Ukraine. Taking this into account, according to NotaYenota, through pages publishing “good news” about “support for Ukraine” from famous people, fakes can be launched, which test the audience for their reaction to various types of influence.

In the Ukrainian segment of Facebook, enemy groups and pages that masquerade as Ukrainian, but are actually controlled from Armenia, are again becoming popular. Specialists of the NotaYenota project drew attention to them. For example, on one of the pages there is the same type of text with different emotional photos generated by artificial intelligence. The messages also contain images of military or wounded people, but often these are photographs from open sources depicting people not involved in the war in Ukraine. Examples of the names of such pages are “We are Ukrainians, We are Strong”, “I am from Ukraine”, “Prayer”, “My Ukraine”, “Life is Beautiful”.

Moreover, project specialists pay attention to one of the messages containing the Russian-language caption “It’s a pity that this photo will score less than a naked singer”. This indicates that the pages are maintained by native languages. This message received more than 80 thousand likes, and according to NotaYenota, it was designed to emotionally influence the audience of the page.

The contact information of these pages indicates an email with the Russian domain mail.ru (the same on all pages). In addition, in some messages one can notice the replacement of Cyrillic characters with Latin ones, such as a, u, x, i, k, 0, which allows one to bypass blocking systems.

In general, according to NotaYenota, such groups are used by Russians for information interventions aimed at dividing society on trigger topics, testing the audience for vulnerability to patriotic and emotional fakes. People interacting with such content can then be used to target advertising campaigns and plan further information attacks using the discovered vulnerabilities.

Propagandists spreading pro-Russian rhetoric through social networks claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi admitted that only 30% of American aid reaches Ukraine, with the rest remaining in the United States. They say that this indicates corruption schemes and kickbacks and therefore Zelenskyi will cease to be President. However, such statements are manipulation.

Specialists from the StopFake project drew attention to it. They found that the fact that a significant portion of US financial aid intended to support Ukraine goes to defense plants in the United States is not evidence of corruption or kickbacks. This is a legal procedure for providing military assistance to other countries, and information about it is publicly available.

During a press conference in Riga, Volodymyr Zelenskyi indeed noted that more than 70% of the allocated funds remain at American defense enterprises. The President explained that this is due to the fact that the cost of weapons provided to Ukraine does not include their free transfer, and American enterprises receive the funds for their services. However, this situation does not indicate any misunderstanding or misconduct, but is part of the normal procedure for providing military assistance.

The StopFake analysts point to an article by The Washington Post writer Marc Thiessen for more context on this process. In particular, this approach helps support the American economy by creating jobs and helping local businesses that support weapons production. This is not a corruption scheme, but a legitimate mechanism to promote defense production.

Propagandists spread such manipulations to reinforce their narrative of “corrupt Ukraine”. Detector Media has already written about other methods that Russia uses for this.