According to the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, this thesis is spread by Russian propaganda through the head of the Guild of Interethnic Journalism of Russia, a member of the commission on patriotic and spiritual and moral education of children and Margarita Lyange, who promotes a narrative about "the oppression of national minorities in Ukraine".

In particular, the propagandist claims that Ukrainian state policy does not allow Ruthenians in Transcarpathia to use their native language, Russian, and that Ruthenians themselves are allegedly persecuted for refusing to call themselves Ukrainians. The Center reports that according to the 2001 census, only 10,000 Transcarpathians, or less than one percent of the region's population, called themselves Ruthenians. In addition, Ruthenians do not communicate with each other in Russian, but refer to their language as so-called Ruthenian. Ukrainian scientists are inclined to believe that the so-called Ruthenian language is one of the many dialects of Ukrainian and not a separate language. In everyday life, Transcarpathians and, in particular, Ruthenians can communicate in a comfortable dialect .