Pro-Russian resources claim that allegedly “swindlers from Ukraine” blackmailed the family of German and Israeli citizen Shani Luk, who was kidnapped by Hamas militants. After it became known about the girl’s kidnapping, the Ukrainians began calling her family on behalf of Hamas and demanding a ransom of 500 thousand euros. The police who investigated the case of the already deceased Shani Luk seemed to come to this conclusion. Propagandists referred to a screenshot of “news published by the German newspaper WDR”. It's fake.

The fact-checkers of the StopFake project began to analyze the information. After independently searching for this news on the website of the German publication WDR, they found out that such material was not published on this news resource. A Google search also did not yield any results about the alleged ransom demand from “Ukrainian scammers”. In addition, there was no mention of a police investigation into this case in reputable German or other media.

Russian propaganda, using the author's style of a German newspaper, tried to justify the actions of Hamas and denigrate Ukraine. The Kremlin is trying to demonize Ukraine in the eyes of ordinary Russian citizens in order to justify the war crimes of its army in Ukraine. Also, by spreading these types of fakes, propagandists hope to weaken international support for Ukraine so that it will not be able to finance defense needs. Previously, we denied information that allegedly former porn actress Mia Khalifa thanked Ukraine for helping Hamas.