Anonymous telegram channels spreading pro-Russian rhetoric often publish messages that coincide with the position of conspiracy theorists on a number of world events. This time they claim that the war in Ukraine is the beginning of the third world war as part of the world elites' plan to destroy humanity. There have been more such messages after recent statements by Bill Gates regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this case, conspiracy theorists are referring to the theory of a “secret world government” made up of businessmen and wealthy people of the world. They allegedly lead heads of state to spread their ideas and sometimes resort to “grand plans”. They are often called pandemics, wars, major natural disasters, etc.

Now fans of conspiracy theories put the coronavirus pandemic and the war against Ukraine in one chain, calling them “stages of the plan to destroy humanity”. Like, the planet was closed for a year, stuffed with vaccines, but this was not enough, so it was needed to finish everyone off with a war. As goals for such plans, propagandists refer to the theory of the “golden billion”: only one billion of the most hardy population should remain on the planet, which could survive all these ups and downs.

Thus, Russian propagandists devalue the tragedy of these events and try to shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim of the aggression. Like, we are only on foot in this game, and the Western elites started the war. However, foreign experience shows that such a deepening of isolation from reality can be dangerous. In particular, in the United States, cases have been recorded when fans of conspiracy theories tried to kill their defendants.