The Internet is spreading the alleged words of the Chairman of the Union of Consumers of Public Utilities Oleh Popenko that the cost of electricity for the population in 2025 will be 6.5-7 UAH kWh. He stated that these figures have already been voiced by representatives of the electricity supplier company YASNO, DTEK and deputy Serhii Nahorniak.

However, the Cabinet of Ministers, YASNO, DTEK and Nahorniak did not announce an increase in the electricity tariff in 2025 to 6.5-7 UAH kWh. The current tariff of 4.32 UAH kWh will be valid until May 2025. Let us recall that according to Ukrainian legislation, electricity tariffs are set by the Cabinet of Ministers.

At the beginning of summer, the government raised electricity tariffs for Ukrainians. In fact, the increase occurred on June 1, 2024, from UAH 2.64 to UAH 4.32 per 1 kWh. This tariff will be valid until April 30, 2025. Against this background, the thesis is spreading on social networks that life in Ukraine is “unbearable” - prices for utilities, including electricity, are “sky-high” and even incomparable with European prices.

Although experts from the analytical center Dixi Group analyzed the thesis and found out that the authors of such disinformation materials take information about prices from different sources without understanding how comparable such information is. One source may indicate prices based on taxes, another - without. One source contains information about wholesale prices for electricity (i.e. without taking into account tariffs for transportation and taxes), and another - about retail (where all these components are already included).

In fact, the explainer differentiated all the indicators that accompany the time when electricity “reaches” the buildings of Europeans - the price of goods, transportation tariffs, supplier markup, taxes - and it was possible to find out that Ukraine has the lowest price for electricity among the European countries considered. This is largely due to government regulation.

Other countries - Italy, the UK, France and Germany - have higher prices, partly due to significant investment needs in clean energy and new electricity grids.

By spreading such a message, propagandists want to feed the narrative that Ukraine is allegedly uninhabitable due to the lack of electricity or high prices for utilities. In this way, the authors want to sow panic among Ukrainians in order to destabilize the mood and create a feeling that “nothing will change”. Also, by calling the so-called collapse revenge for the Crimean Bridge, Russians are once again trying to shift responsibility for what is happening to Ukraine. They say that Russia is destroying the infrastructure exclusively because of Ukraine's aggression. However, it is Russia that is the aggressor, and it is this country that started the war.

Russian Telegram channels are distributing photos and videos from various places in Kyiv, where posters with the words “Putin will come and restore order” were allegedly posted. The cards were allegedly posted for the Russian dictator's birthday on October 7, 2024.

But the fakers took a photo of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra from an article in a Ukrainian media outlet and added Putin's posters to it in a photo editor. Other photos are distributed exclusively by Russian channels. After all, a reverse Google search showed that the photo with the flag, which allegedly has a poster of Putin pasted on it, was taken from a 2023 article by the Ukrainian media outlet Texty.org.ua. The article is dedicated to the work of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra reserve during the war.

The locations in other photographs of Russians cannot be identified. There is no confirmation that such postcards ever appeared in Kyiv or Ukraine as a whole. If they were really noticed in Kyiv, this would lead to a public outcry and publications would appear on Telegram channels or in the media. Meanwhile, the “news” is spread exclusively by Russian and pro-Russian sources. In this way, they are trying to show that Putin is “awaited” in Ukraine and is not perceived as an aggressor.

A photo of graffiti allegedly in Washington, allegedly made for the Reuters news agency, is being circulated online. It shows two rats with Israeli and Ukrainian flags “fighting” for an American dollar.

But this is a fake photo. The photo with graffiti was compiled. In fact, checking the photo in a special FotoForensics tool showed that the image was probably edited. Moreover, Reuters did not publish such a photo on its official website, as well as on X, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. Also on the building depicted in the fake, a banner of the American commercial real estate agency in Los Angeles - illi Commercial Real Estate is visible.

Our colleagues, fact-checkers of VoxCheck, checked the photos of all properties available for rent and sale on the official website of illi Commercial Real Estate and did not find a single property similar to the fake. In addition, the fakers claim that the photos were taken in Washington. However, there are no properties available for purchase/rent in Washington on the map of properties.

We have documented fakes many times, whether they involve fake graffiti, foreign magazine covers/newspaper columns, or advertising videos. In this way, propagandists aim to show that their rhetoric (for example, that Zelenskyi is hated by the whole world) is also repeated in the West. This may make readers think that the public is really unhappy with Ukraine. And especially when the authors use elements of popular culture, implying that people are laughing at the situation in Ukraine and that the Ukrainian agenda is a reason for Europe to laugh.

For example, we recently reported that anonymous people were spreading a fake story from the supposedly French publication Le Figaro, which spoke of a “Ukrainian refugee killer”.

A video is being distributed in Russian social networks, showing military equipment located along the road. The publication indicates that it supposedly belongs to Ukraine, it was hit in the Kursk region, where it remains.

But the video does indeed show Russian equipment that Ukrainian troops captured in 2022. OSINT analysts geolocated the location of the video recording to the village of Myrnoye in Donetsk region. And the video itself has a watermark from one of the Russian propaganda Telegram channels. When the video was published on the channel, it was simply captioned as “a cemetery of Ukrainian armored vehicles destroyed in the zone” and did not mention the Kursk region.

And the OSINT analyst EjShahid actually established that the video was filmed in the village of Myrne in the Donetsk region. It is located at a great distance from the Russian-Ukrainian border. The analyst confirms that the video shows captured Russian tanks.

Ukrainian troops broke through the Russian border in the Sumy region on Tuesday, August 6. On August 12, President Zelenskyi wrote directly for the first time that Ukraine was conducting an operation in Russia's Kursk region. On August 12, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi reported that Ukraine controlled almost 1,000 km of the Kursk region. As of August 21, 93 settlements in Russia are under Ukraine's control.