Anonymous telegram channels are distributing a video story supposedly from the French publication Le Figaro, which tells about the murder of a twenty-year-old woman on the closing day of the Olympic Games at the “hands of a Ukrainian refugee”. A screenshot of news material from the publication’s website is added to the publications.

However, this video is fake. In the original story there is no insertion that the suspect for committing the crime is a “Ukrainian refugee”. In general, the nationality of the accused is not indicated in the video material. There is only information that this is a forty-nine-year-old man who does not speak French. No additional information was added in the interests of the investigation.

Thus, Russian propaganda is trying to present Ukrainian refugees as criminals or terrorists, as a cultural and economic threat to the EU - in order to reduce support for Ukraine. We mentioned this in our own research. Since the beginning of the big war in Ukraine, Russian propaganda has been trying to discredit refugees who were forced to leave Ukraine in order to save their lives. Propagandists regularly spread fake news about them; call refugees dependents; they claim that they went abroad not for safety, but for profit; they convince that residents of countries that have accepted Ukrainian refugees are dissatisfied with the behavior of Ukrainians. Propagandists need this in order to stake out the opinion that Ukrainians are pagans who do not value the help that residents of other countries provide them; take advantage of the kindness of people in other countries.