Propagandists use various conspiracy theories to justify the crimes of Russians, as well as to discredit the Ukrainian government and its foreign partners. In this case we are talking about the theory of “currency wars”.

The theory comes from a book by Chinese author Song Hongbin called Currency Wars, first published in 2007 and re-released in 2009. Literary critics call it the first known book in the genre of economic nationalism. According to the book, Western countries are allegedly controlled by a group of private banks manipulated by the countries' central banks. In 2009, more than 200 thousand copies were sold, plus about 400 thousand unofficial copies in free circulation. The book became a bestseller in China; it has been read by many government officials and business leaders across the country. However, it has been criticized in Western media as spreading false information and being based on conspiracy theories. The New York Times criticized the book at the time for promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

According to Hongbin and supporters of his theory, these large private banks that allegedly control countries use currency manipulation to enrich themselves by first lending money in US dollars to developing countries and then selling their currencies. They say that this is why a number of financial crises occurred, including the “Japanese lost decade”, the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Latin American financial crisis, etc. It is also claimed that the Rothschild family has a fortune of 5 trillion dollars, while Bill Gates has only 40 billion. Like, it is this family that controls the world and creates a new world order. Conspiracy theorists also believe that the US Federal Reserve System is allegedly not a government agency, but several private banks controlled by the interests of the Rothschild family.

Russian propagandists began to spread this theory in the context of providing military and financial assistance to Ukraine, as well as the sanctions policies of its allies. This theory has acquired particular proportions in TikTok, where users are being intimidated with its help by the collapse of the global financial system. They say that with sanctions against Russia, the West is only making the ruble stronger due to the influence of the state, while the American economy is declining. In addition, there are supporters of this theory who claim that the war is exclusively economic in nature, and Ukraine is only an attempt to externally redistribute the world. However, just like the assertion that the US Federal Reserve is not a government institution, the versions of conspiracy theorists about the reasons for the Russian full-scale invasion are not true.

Russian telegram channels are again trying to spread the idea that Ukrainians as an ethnic group have supposedly only existed since the beginning of the 20th century. They use the sayings of UPA commander Vasyl Kuk, who in one of his interviews noted that during Austrian times the concept of “Ukrainians” did not exist. Instead, he said, everyone was known as “Ruthenians” or “Rusyns”. He also explained that the term “Ukrainians” appeared later after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, the interpretation is a manipulation of the Russians.

Specialists from the VoxCheck project drew attention to it. They found out that Kuk was talking about a period of a specific historical era, and not about the entire history of Ukraine. The term “Ukrainians” was used already in the 17th century, as certified in a letter to Hetman Ivan Vyhovskyi in 1657. In addition, the word Ukraine is found in the Kyiv Chronicle of 1187.

The terms “Ruthenians” or “Rusyns” have also been used to refer to Ukrainians throughout history. For example, in the Lithuanian-Russian chronicles of the XIV-XVI centuries and under the Cossack state. However, these terms did not exclude the existence of the Ukrainian people, but only reflected different aspects of their identity.

Therefore, attempts to present Kuk's words as evidence that Ukrainians as an ethnic group did not exist before 1918 are mistaken. This is just an attempt to distort historical facts for political purposes.

Russian clinical psychologist Svitlana Kolobova stated that according to official data from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, currently 30% of military personnel at the front suffer from various mental illnesses. She also noted that such estimates may be underestimated, and Ukrainian experts allegedly do not disclose how they identified these psychological problems in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Russian propagandist Volodymyr Soloviov conveyed these statements to himself. However, these statements are unreliable.

Specialists from the VoxCheck project drew attention to them. There are no data or studies confirming such statistics on the official websites of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and on social networks. The Public Health Center or the National Health Service of Ukraine have also not released any information on this matter.

So far, only statistics are available on the number of military personnel who may face mental disorders in the future, but these data were not made public by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, but by foreign and Ukrainian specialists. For example, in the report “Scars on their souls: PTSD and veterans of Ukraine”, experts from the international analytical center Globsec noted that during the ATO and Joint Forces Operation, about 25% of cases of combat stress turned into PTSD of varying severity, and from 20 to 30% of military personnel. those who received psychological trauma during hostilities were unable to solve them without the help of a specialist. According to these data, the real number of cases of PTSD in Ukraine may be more than 20%.

Propagandists spread such fakes to discredit the Ukrainian authorities and the Ukrainian Armed Forces. They say they don’t pay attention to this problem, which is becoming increasingly widespread. Russian propaganda stigmatizes the issue of mental health and tries to intimidate the local population.

Propagandists are spreading a message in which the Russian allegedly expressed his negative opinion about obtaining Ukrainian citizenship. According to him, he was convinced of his mistake, since now, having a Ukrainian passport, he missed the opportunity to leave the country and he faces being sent to the front. However, this is fake.

Specialists from the StopFake project drew attention to it. They found out that this post first appeared on X (formerly Twitter) on April 19 and was posted by the user @KirriloUA, on whose account one can see mainly propaganda materials.

The photo used in this post does not actually belong to the author, but is taken from open sources and has been circulating since at least 2020. Moreover, in Ukraine, from November 1, 2016, only ID cards are issued, and not passports in booklet format, as in the photo. The latter forms have been taken out of circulation, and now a passport of the 1994 model can only be obtained through a judicial process.

The active dissemination of this material in pro-Russian media indicates that this may be part of an organized propaganda campaign to discredit Ukraine.

Propagandists began disseminating information in the media and social networks that a Ukrainian military man was allegedly injured during a training session to drop ammunition from a UAV. As “evidence”, they add a video of a man in military uniform dropping a grenade from a drone, which allegedly explodes near him. However, this is fake.

Analyzing the distributed video, StopFake specialists noticed that the “explosion” looked unnatural. The moment of detonation is not visible on the recording. The image of an explosion suddenly appears and immediately blocks out what is happening on the screen. In the video editing program Adobe Premiere Pro, one can see that the “explosion” overlaps the original video in one hundredth of a second.

Such a sudden change in frames suggests that the video has been edited. StopFake analysts began looking for similar “explosions” on the Internet. It turned out that this is a very popular effect that can be applied to any video. For example, on Instagram it is called Explosion. Fact-checkers created a similar video of the explosion and also divided it into frames in Adobe Premiere Pro. The frozen footage taken overnight from this effect and the fake video indicates that this is one and the same “explosion”.

It seems that propagandists added an “explosion” to the video of the military man or passed off someone’s joke as reality to discredit the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This video fake began to spread not only in the Russian segment of the Internet, but also in different languages of the world. Detector Media has repeatedly refuted other fakes of Russian propaganda against the Ukrainian Armed Forces.