Russian propaganda will spread the news that The New York Times (NYT) has stated the failure of anti-Russian sanctions. He said, "the West's attempts to stifle the export of Russian oil are returning to him with a boomerang." But it is manipulation, writes VoxCheck. In July, the NYT published an article analyzing the effect of anti-Russian sanctions. In reality, they have not worked as well or as quickly as Western governments had hoped. But this does not mean that the sanctions do not work at all or will not affect the Russian economy in the future. The authors of the NYT article admit that it has not yet been possible to stop the war, as hoped in the West. But not all sanctions have already started to take effect, and the action of some will be effective in the future. Therefore, the thesis of Russian propaganda about the "recognition of defeat" of the sanctions policy is another manipulation.

Another historical fake used by Russian propaganda is the myth that Ukrainians never lived in the Black Sea region. It is part of the great myth about "originally Russian lands," which Russia allegedly went to "return to itself," restoring "historical justice."

As the history of the last 30 years shows, Russia started wars everywhere without using historical myths - for example, in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Syria. Propaganda did not need an explanation about "Russian peace" or "liberation of suffering peoples" from the "Nazis." But to explain the invasion of Ukraine since 2014, propaganda uses all sorts of fakes to prove its own "right" to kill Ukrainians. Sometimes they are directly opposite. In some cases, propaganda proves that Ukrainians do not exist at all; in others - they exist but "did not live" in certain territories and therefore do not have the right to them.

One of these fakes - that Ukrainians never lived in Odesa - was analyzed in detail by StopFake.

Images with data on the national composition of Odesa in 1894 are being distributed on social networks. According to these data, Russians, Jews, Poles, Germans, Greeks, and French lived in Odesa then. As the publication writes, the data indicated in the picture are more or less comparable with the data of the Odesa population census of 1892. His results were published two years later, in 1894. At that time, 336,000 people lived in Odesa. But, as the researchers explain, the population distribution took place according to many parameters, such as native language, religion, and whether the resident was: a Russian citizen or a foreigner. At the same time, people were not asked about their nationality; however, later census, held in 1897, there were statistics by nationality - and in the Kherson province, which included Odesa, 1,462,039 Ukrainians lived, which was 53.5% of the population of the region.

Here, read more about population censuses and historical data about Ukrainians in Odesa and Kherson regions.

Russian propaganda has been spreading the narrative that Ukraine's leadership is allegedly illegitimate for many years. Since 2014, he has been referring to President Petro Poroshenko. Still, after the start of the full-scale invasion of Russia, propagandists also claim that Volodymyr Zelensky is not the "real" president either. The last time this message was spread was by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Serhii Lavrov, in an interview with the propagandist Margarita Simonyan. "Putin told Macron: your Zelensky is the product of a coup d'état."

It is a lie. After the Revolution of Dignity of 2014, free, democratic elections have already been held in Ukraine twice - in 2014, the compliance of which was recognized by the whole world with all the norms of legislation and procedures, and in 2019 - when Volodymyr Zelensky became president, through the same elections recognized by the world. Russia itself recognized these elections as legitimate both times.

At the same time, in the Russian Federation itself, every election is the result of large-scale manipulations and violations of democratic procedures - unlike in Russia, in Ukraine, there are always representatives of the opposition at the polls, and in one case, it was the opposition candidate who became the next president.

Russian propaganda constantly uses distortions of historical facts to prove that they "have the right to Ukraine" and other countries of the former Soviet Union. But, according to their twisted logic, Putin himself is not a legitimate president: unlike Ukraine, there really was a coup in Russia in 1991, which resulted in the election of Boris Yeltsin and the subsequent coming to power of his successor, Volodymyr Putin.

Russian propaganda media spread the news that Ukrainians are calling on the country's leadership to negotiate with Russia "for the sake of saving the lives of peaceful people." As proof of this news, they cite a single petition that was created on the website of the President of Ukraine on July 26.

The petition exists, in almost two days it has received less than 500 votes, but even if it receives the necessary 25,000 votes, it does not reflect the real picture of public sentiment in Ukraine.

As reported by StopFake, a recent study by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) shows that the absolute majority of Ukrainians are not ready for territorial concessions or compromises with Russia, even if this prolongs the war and threatens the country's independence. In July, the number of people not ready to compromise with Russia even increased: in May, 82% were not ready to make concessions, and in July - 84%. So, despite the existence of the petition, Ukrainian society does not currently perceive compromise as a possible option for ending the war.

In addition to spreading this manipulation, the Russian publication "Izvestia" simply lied: it claims that the petition gathered 30 thousand votes.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has spread another fake: it seems that Ukraine is shelling the Zaporizhzhia NPP, and because of this threatens Europe with an industrial disaster.

"With maniacal tenacity, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are shelling the Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest in Europe, not caring about its preservation and violating the resolution and decision of the IAEA general conference. It is obvious that the Ukrainian side is deliberately leading the case to a large-scale industrial disaster. We see that the USA and its European allies are completely satisfied with this," said the representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ivan Nechaev.

It is another accusation that has no evidence. On the contrary, it is the troops of the Russian Federation that are creating the prerequisites for an industrial disaster at the nuclear power plant by bringing heavy weapons to the territory of the station. StopFake writes about it.

Thus, on July 21, the Energoatom company reported that the Russian occupiers brought at least 14 units of heavy military equipment with ammunition, as well as weapons and explosives to the engine room of the 1st power unit of the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The company said that an arsenal of imported heavy equipment with all ammunition is located next to the equipment that ensures the operation of the turbogenerator - and the use of the weapons could lead to an explosion at the station. Earlier, Energoatom, which controls all operating nuclear plants in the country, has repeatedly stated that Russian forces are turning the ZNPP into a military base and using it as a shield. In addition, the occupiers constantly capture local workers, and there is evidence of their torture. Read more about the situation at the ZNPP here.

In the German segment of Facebook, an image is shared: "Shocking survey: 11 million Germans will fight for Russia and Putin against NATO in case of war!" The posts with this image reported that the German channel ARD conducted such a survey.

It's a fake: German fact-checkers from Correctiv contacted the broadcaster, and ARD denied ever conducting such a survey.

The German segment of Facebook regularly spread fakes discrediting Ukraine, the Armed Forces, and slandering Ukrainian refugees in Germany.

Propaganda telegram channels spread the message that rocket strikes by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Antoniv bridge in Kherson are irrelevant - it is "a matter of three beams and two liters of concrete." These messages were recorded by the Center for Strategic Communications in its study of propaganda telegram channels.

In fact, although the bridge is currently standing, it is closed to all types of vehicles. Moreover, according to the standards of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the army must stop moving on the bridge in the event of any, even minor, damage. However, according to satellite images, the bridge cannot be patched with "two liters of concrete", it has significant surface damage.

The other two bridges are a single-track railway bridge across the Dnipro and a bridge over the Kakhovska HPP dam in Nova Kakhovka. The latter was also shelled earlier, the Russians tried to repair it. Also, the Armed Forces of Ukraine previously attacked the Daryiv Bridge across the Ingulets River, which connects two parts of the right-bank Kherson Oblast occupied by the Russians.

It is obvious that all these bridges are now under the fire control of the Armed Forces and the supply of equipment to the occupiers in the region has been substantially closed. That is why the Russian army is trying to build a pontoon bridge instead of the closed Antoniv bridge. At the same time, propaganda tries to convince the audience that the destruction of bridges will not affect the situation in the region.

At the same time, Russian publications spread the news that it is claimed that three companies - Vanguard, Blackrock, and Blackstone, the main capital of which belongs to American funds, bought 17 million hectares of agricultural land in Ukraine. But it is a fake.

All Russian publications refer to the news of an unknown Australian site called Australiannationalreview.com, which does not provide any evidence to prove these claims. The news on the Australian website refers to material on the Auckland Institute, which is devoted to changes in legislation in Ukraine regarding the sale of agricultural land. However, in the report, there is no information about any of the three companies that allegedly bought a third of the land in Ukraine. Moreover, the material of the Auckland Institute appeared on August 6, 2021, and already the news with the names of these three campaigns and the thesis about "a third of the land sold" was published on May 27, 2022, on the Australian website. But it was reprinted in the Russian mass media only on July 26.

According to the State Service for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre write StopFake, 0.26 million hectares were sold in Ukraine during the year of operation of the land market. This figure is about 0.8% of the area of ​​agricultural land (32.6 million hectares) entered into the geocadastre. Thus, the data on 17 million hectares operated by Kremlin propagandists is 65 times greater than the area of ​​agricultural land actually sold in Ukraine.

The Russians have created a "Handbook for Ukrainian citizens on organizing resistance to the Kyiv puppet leadership," in which they advise to sabotage work in socially significant areas - in administrative positions, office workers, employees of government bodies, in the medical and educational fields, law enforcement activities, etc. It is reported by the HUR of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

The manual has 14 pages, which repeatedly use terminology that reinforces the propaganda of hatred towards everything Ukrainian: "Kyiv hunta," "puppet leadership," etc.

The Main Directorate of Intelligence the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine claims that the "tips" encourage people to promote the Russian language (pretending not to understand Ukrainian), slow down the pace of work of state organizations, send various incorrect requests to state structures, make mistakes in the documentation and use more materials, including the number of medical, than required.