The narrative of a "weak" or "non-existent" state under foreign control has been used by Russian propagandists for many years, but these theses have been disseminated en masse since 2014. The same theses are also promoted during the war, but not only in the Russian media - they also penetrate the Western press. The VoxCheck project collected and refuted the most common theses in Italian and German publications.

Since the end of 2013, of the many messages about "external governance," there continue to be statements in the information space about a "coup d'état" in Ukraine, which the West, namely Victoria Nuland and the US State Department, has financed and artificially created. Also, conspiracy theories about "Pentagon biolaboratories" and "secret NATO bases" are promoted in the Western press, and it is constantly noted that the West is trying to "destroy the economy of Ukraine" - seemingly to prevent Ukraine from becoming a competitive state.

All of these fakes are easy to refute - for example, no one will "destroy" a competitor through its financial support, which the West constantly provides to Ukraine, and the non-existent NATO bases in Ukraine have still not been found, even by Russian propagandists who daily report on the "destruction of Ukrainian military infrastructure" while destroying schools, housing and hospitals. Read more about these fakes in VoxCheck and Detector's Mediabreakdown.