Russian propagandists claim that in Ukraine, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the number of police officers per 10 thousand population has increased from 20 to 100. In asserting this, propagandists refer to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Ihor Klymenko, who allegedly made a corresponding statement. As a consequence, Ukraine allegedly “became a 100% police state”.

In fact, the information was manipulated. In an interview with the “We are Ukraine” channel, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Ihor Klymenko spoke about increasing the number of police officers fivefold specifically in the deoccupied territories, and not throughout the entire territory of Ukraine.

“On average, there were 23-26 police officers per 10 thousand population of Ukraine before the large-scale war. Today there are more than 100 in the deoccupied territories. Because the regime is much tougher, because there are many more tasks. I can say that the police began a large-scale war and increased their functionality by 80%. But we are not increasing the number of police officers”, the minister said.

For comparison, according to Eurostat, on average in EU countries there were 335 police officers per 100 thousand population in 2019-2021. That is, on average 33-34 police officers per 10 thousand people. In 2021, in Ukraine this figure was 287 police officers, and in Russia - 510, which was one of the largest figures in the world.

In 2014, Russia had 564 police officers per 100 thousand people, and that year it was recognized as the most police state. It is significant that over the past 10 years the number of police officers in Russia has remained at one of the highest levels in the world, while in Ukraine this figure does not exceed the European average.

By manipulating information, in this case, propagandists seek to create a picture of an authoritarian Ukraine led by Volodymyr Zelenskyi. Like, now it’s clear why people don’t oppose the “Kyiv regime”. However, Ukraine is a free and democratic state, and Russians’ reproaches about authoritarianism in their neighboring country have no basis.

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On the eve of the presidential elections in Russia, the occupation “administrations” and propagandists are promoting the message that “85% of the population in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine supports Putin”. The Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council writes about this.

The Russians also sent special detachments to the occupied territories of Ukraine to create the appearance of supporting Putin. Their task is to oversee the falsification of ballots and monitor the work of the so-called “election commissions”.

One can take part in illegal “elections” in enslaved territories with either a Russian or Ukrainian passport, ID card or other identity document. And this indicates the failure of forced passportization in the occupied territories of Ukraine. This was reported by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. At the same time, this is another tool of the Russian special services to identify “unreliable” Ukrainians.

The Washington Post has gained access to Russian documents proving that Russian propaganda is organizing a large-scale disinformation campaign in Ukraine, Europe and around the world.

As part of this campaign, tens of thousands of manipulative media publications, fake news and messages on social networks have already been published from a kind of army of Russian “trolls”. The purpose of these publications is to discredit the leadership of Ukraine, split the elite, demoralize the Armed Forces of Ukraine and disorient the Ukrainians. It should be noted that the theses from the fake posts of Russians echo the theses of individual political players and bloggers in Ukraine.

One of the main directions of the campaign is an attack on the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi. The Russians are trying to convince Ukrainians and the world that Zelenskyi is afraid of losing power and is allegedly replacing democracy in Ukraine with authoritarianism. The Russians are also promoting the message that Western countries will soon replace Zelenskyi because he is becoming uncomfortable for them. The Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council urges not to be fooled by such information, and to trust only verified sources.

• Read on Censor.NET: How Russia tests the mood of Ukrainian society through pseudo-Ukrainian Facebook pages

Russian media write that rheumatological drugs for large Western pharmacological companies were tested on patients at Hospital No. 7 in Mariupol. Everything happened between 2008 and 2016. In asserting this, propagandists refer to “documents that were found at the site of the reconstruction of the hospital”.

The Center for Strategic Communications and Security analyzed this information. As it turned out, Russian propaganda did not provide any real evidence to support this news. The reference to the mythical “workers who found the test documents” cannot be an official source. The documents themselves have not been made public, so we can conclude that they simply do not exist.

In addition, a search for information about “drug research on patients in Mariupol hospitals” in open sources also did not yield results. It should be noted that in Ukraine no one has conducted or is conducting experiments on people. In particular, such cases were not recorded either in the Luhansk region or in the Donetsk region.

This fake propaganda piece echoes others like it about “the functioning of American biological laboratories in Ukraine”, “black transplantology”, “combat mosquitoes”, etc. The purpose of such information dumps is to demonize the West and Ukraine. On the other hand, propagandists are trying to once again assure everyone that “Ukraine is a puppet state”, so Western countries supposedly allow themselves to do whatever they want on its territory.

Pro-Kremlin resources are disseminating information that a few days after the promulgation of the decree of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi on the resignation of Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine allegedly sent an encrypted signal “to action”. In a photo distributed online, Zaluzhnyi allegedly depicted the letter “Z” with the index and middle fingers of both hands, which is a symbol of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.

In fact, this information is not true. This is written about in the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security. To create this fake, Russian propagandists manipulated the original photograph. On the social networks of the President of Ukraine on February 8, 2024, the day of Zaluzhnyi’s resignation, a photograph of a handshake between Zelenskyi and the now former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was published. This photo was what the Russians took as the basis for creating a fake one.

By distributing the edited photo, the Russians tried to mislead the Ukrainians. They say that General Zaluzhnyi either despaired of Ukraine’s victory, or was “offended” by Zelenskyi for being fired, so he decided to openly support Russian aggression. However, Zaluzhnyi’s “mysterious sign” is nothing more than a fiction of Russian propaganda. We previously reported that unknown persons created websites called “Zaluzhnyi 2024”, however, these resources are not actually associated with General Zaluzhnyi, and Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have already been informed of their existence.