Propagandists on anonymous telegram channels, where they spread pro-Russian rhetoric, claim that there is allegedly a “jump in radiation” in western Ukraine, which is why the Ukrainian military began to carefully inspect cars at the border in protective suits and masks. However, this is fake.

Specialists of the VoxCheck project and Agence France-Presse (AFP) drew attention to it. They emphasize that the photo that the propagandists provide as evidence of their claims was indeed published on the website of the Polish Border Guard in 2020. This version of the photo has the signature of its author - Vladyslav Chulak. AFP fact-checkers reached out to Chulak, who confirmed that he took this photo during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic at the Gubinek checkpoint between Poland and Germany.

VoxCheck also claims that, at the request of the Polish publication Konkret24, the Office of Strategic Communications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine noted that the military at the border does not carry out checks in protective suits. The press secretary of the Polish Border Service, Anna Mykhalska, also confirmed that there are no Ukrainian soldiers in protective suits and masks on the Ukrainian-Polish border.

By spreading such fakes, propagandists want to intimidate both foreigners and Ukrainians, as well as shift the responsibility for the crimes of Russians from the aggressor to the victim. In the end, VoxCheck experts claimed that this fake was created in support of the statements of the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Mykola Patrushev, dated May 19, 2023, where he said that as a result of an explosion of depleted uranium ammunition in the Khmelnytskyi region, radiation was approaching Europe. However, the Main Center for Special Control of the State Space Agency of Ukraine claimed that the background radiation in western Ukraine was normal.