On social media, Russian propagandists are spreading a picture of the Women's Peace and Security Global Index (WPS Index) for 2023, according to which Ukraine is supposedly “the worst country in the world for women”. The propaganda also makes an ironic comment: “But soon they will be the only ones left there”.

In fact, the Russians manipulated the information, as reported by the StopFake project. The data on the chart reflects the situation in Europe, but not in the world as a whole. According to the WPS Index, in 2023, the lowest scores were given to Afghanistan, Yemen, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and several other countries. Ukraine is not in the top ten worst countries for women, it ranks 117th out of 177 countries. At the same time, Ukraine has the lowest score among European countries.

It is worth noting that Ukraine received such low ratings precisely because of the war with Russia, and they reflect the difficult realities that women face in war conditions. Thus, the aforementioned rating evaluates various components of women's status from participation in the economy to health and risks of violence. In particular, it includes assessments of education, security, parliamentary representation, maternal mortality, legal protection and proximity to armed conflict.

By manipulating information, Russia is trying to discredit Ukraine, influence its image in the world and shift the focus. Earlier, we documented a fake, supposedly, that the Bellingcat investigation proved that Yermak paid Time for a place in the ranking of the most influential people of the year.

Anonymous telegrams are distributing a video report supposedly from the BBC. It, citing Bellingcat, claims that Ukraine sent SBU workers to the Olympics along with the athletes so that none of the participants in the competition would escape.

VoxCheck analysts explained that the BBC and Bellingcat did not disseminate such information, such information was simply made up. For example, the design of the fake video and the real BBC stories is different: the original reports use different fonts, and the video title is usually inserted into a white and red frame.

There are no short videos on media pages with only voice-over music - the BBC adds narrator accompaniment, comments from different speakers, or leaves the original sound from the scene without changing it in any way.

Using a reverse search on Google, it was possible to establish that the fakers selected random photos from the network for a fake story, for example, in one of the frames, demonstrating “current events”, they used a photo from 2018.

Read more: Macron may allegedly resign a week before the Olympics, BBC video

Propagandists have recently begun to spoof stories from well-known media, using their design elements to create the effect of recognition and trust in the viewer of one of the quality media. For example, we recently reported that anonymous people were spreading a fake story allegedly from the French publication Le Figaro, which talked about a “Ukrainian refugee killer”.

A video allegedly published by the German publication DW is being circulated in the Russian segment of social networks. It allegedly talks about a “new Bellingcat investigation” about a plan to imitate an attempt on Zelenskyi’s children, which was allegedly developed by the Office of the President and the Main Intelligence Directorate. In fact, the Russian authorities and intelligence services planned to blame the terrorist act.

“The Ukrainian side allegedly contacted the US Central Intelligence Agency to talk about the planned provocation, but received a sharp refusal - after all, the American partners think that such a scenario, on the contrary, would escalate the confrontation”, they write in the messages.

StopFake specialists examined the case and found out that this story was completely made up. This news was not distributed by either Deutsche Welle or Bellingcat. Moreover, Deutsche Welle’s videos have a completely different format - in their videos they use original footage and voice-over of the announcer, while on the Internet they distribute cut-ups of stock photos with superimposed text and music.

Pro-Russian sources through the social networks Telegram and X (formerly Twitter) times spread information to Western audiences that civilians in the city of Bucha, Kyiv region, were tortured not by the Russian, but by the Ukrainian military. In reporting this, propagandists refer to the words of the Czech military man Philip Seaman, who fought on the side of Ukraine and is now under investigation. Also, to the reports about the “atrocities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” in Bucha, they add a screenshot of news from the Czech news agency ČTK, which talks about the Czech who committed offenses.

In fact, Philippe Seaman is now really on trial, but his case does not at all concern the torture of civilians. Ukrinform fact-checkers write about this. The ČTK material cited by propagandists states that the prosecutor’s office accuses Siman of illegal service in the Ukrainian army and looting in the combat zone during the occupation of the cities of Irpen and Bucha in the Kyiv region in 2022.

As for the first, the Czech did not have permission from the president of his country to fight in a foreign army. As for the looting, according to the indictment, in his free time, Siman repeatedly appropriated the belongings of both dead soldiers and civilians. Accordingly, in April 2022, the man was detained by the Ukrainian army, but was subsequently fired and returned to the Czech Republic. Today he could be sentenced to five years in prison for serving in a foreign army. Moreover, he also faces exceptional punishment for looting.

In a comment to Ukrinform, the Czech news agency ČTK confirmed that the information about the torture of civilians in Bucha by the Ukrainian military is fake and that their journalists did not write about it.

In the end, such statements by the Russians were refuted by numerous journalistic investigations by leading international media, in particular Bellingcat and the Associated Press.

Russian resources are distributing a video with the BBC logo, which claims that the personal endocrinologist of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi allegedly did not return to Ukraine after finishing a medical conference in London. He decided to take a bus to Paris, where he subsequently applied for refugee status. Despite the fact that the Office of the President of Ukraine allegedly diligently hid the escape of doctor Zelenskyi, the Bellingcat research group managed to find out the “truth”.

In fact, this information is fake. Journalists from the StopFake project reported this. The BBC has never published this video on its social networks or website. In addition, none of the reputable Western media reported such an incident either. Such information is not available on the official resources of the Bellingcat research group.

It is the Russian media that writes about the “flight” of doctor Zelenskyi to France, citing the BBC. However, when clicking on a link in a publication, the reader is taken not to the original source, but to the main page of the British media company.

The Russians deliberately used the BBC logo and its design for propaganda purposes. The video itself is a compilation of various photo and video materials, probably taken from stock sites, featuring Volodymyr Zelenskyi, Hristo Grozev from Bellingcat, photographs of refugees and a train station in London. Finally, the video does not contain any information about “Zelenskyi’s doctor”, neither his photo nor his name.

It should be noted that this is not the first time that propagandists have used this format of fakes with links to the BBC and Bellingcat. Thus, we previously analyzed a fake video on behalf of Bellingcat about the funeral business in Ukraine, as well as another about how the head of the OP Andrii Yermak allegedly paid $27 million for a place in Time’s ranking of the 100 most influential people in the world.

During this year, Russia has stepped up a disinformation campaign against France and the upcoming Summer Olympics in Paris, which begin on July 26. In November 2023, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) warned about fake news regarding the Olympics on Telegram and other social networks, which was confirmed at the time by the head of IOC communications Christian Klaue. Material with examples of such news was prepared by fact-checkers of the Norwegian organization Faktisk.

According to a June 6 Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) report, Russia has been conducting influence operations for more than a year to influence the perception of the Olympics in France, attempting to “disrupt, discredit and humiliate the international competition in the eyes of participants, spectators and global audiences”. This, in particular, is associated with the fact that Russian athletes are prohibited from competing at the Games under the Russian flag. MTAC gave disinformation campaigns that spread fakes about the 2024 Olympics, the names Storm-1679 and Storm-1099. The Paris Olympic Games have been one of Storm-1679's main targets since last summer. MTAC chief Clint Watts told The New York Times that the cables are often the source of fake news in these campaigns, circulating for several days before disappearing. When fake content is checked by accounts or fact-checking resources with large followings, it gets more views and reaches new audiences. Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins noted that fact-checking may lead to wider dissemination of content, but it does not help Russian propagandists much.

Microsoft cites several examples of disinformation in this campaign, including deepfake videos that were allegedly created by prominent news media and security institutions. One such video, purportedly from French TV channel France24, attempted to show that 24% of Olympic tickets sold were returned due to fears of terrorist attacks in Paris. Another video purportedly from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reinforced this message. It claimed that the CIA was allegedly warning of a major terrorist threat in the Paris metro. A CIA spokesman told American news outlet CBS News that the video was fake and had no connection with the agency. The video was also distributed by the English-language version of the Russian “online newspaper” Pravda, part of the Russian propaganda media network. The propagandists also created a fake documentary called Olympics Has Fallen, using the identity of the streaming platform Netflix and the voice of Tom Cruise, created using artificial intelligence. The video also included fake five-star reviews from prominent media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and the BBC. The mockumentary was subsequently removed from YouTube.

Norway's top fact-checking organization, Faktisk, and hundreds of other media outlets and fact-checkers around the world have been targeted by a Russian disinformation campaign in which a significant portion of emails asking to fact-check Olympics news have been coming from fake addresses over the past few months.

There have been precedents for the concentration of Russian propaganda efforts and disinformation campaigns around the Olympic Games. For example, during the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, the opening ceremony suffered a cyber attack carried out by Russian intelligence officers in an attempt to create the impression that it was the work of North Korea.

In this case, the purpose of Russian disinformation is to undermine confidence in France, the IOC and the Olympic Games, as well as to create a negative image of the host country on the international stage. In addition, in this way they want to cause panic and create the illusion that international events without the presence of Russia are not important and relevant.

A video from the BBC is being circulated online, citing Bellingcat as saying that Emmanuel Macron may resign a week before the Olympics. The reasons for this decision are the victory of the radical right party in the elections to the European Parliament and the announcement of early parliamentary elections in France, as well as the high risk of terrorist threats and unpreparedness for the Olympic Games.

VoxCheck analysts explained that the BBC and Bellingcat did not disseminate such information. After all, the fake “report” was created from separate frames that were not related to each other.

A reverse photo search on Google showed that propagandists used individual photographs and videos from open sources to create the fake news. In particular, the photo with Emmanuel Macron was taken from the Instagram account of the official photographer of the French President.

Russian resources are distributing a story on behalf of the BBC that allegedly Bellingcat journalists found out the following: “The funeral business in Ukraine was monopolized by a company whose main shareholder is the personal eccentric of Hunter Biden, the second son of Joe Biden”.

However, this information is not true. This was reported by the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council. In fact, this story is another fake by Russian propagandists. There are no materials on this topic on the official Bellingcat pages. In addition, there is no corresponding story on the official BBC resources.

This is not the first time that Russian propaganda has spread its fake news on behalf of reputable Western publications in an attempt to give them more credibility. All fake videos have similar templates using international media graphics and captions without voiceover of the text. Previously, we analyzed a similar video fake on behalf of the same BBC about the Bellingcat investigation, in which journalists allegedly found out that the head of the Presidential Executive Office Andrii Yermak paid $27 million for a place in Time’s ranking of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Russian media write that the head of the Presidential Office, Andrii Yermak, allegedly paid $27 million for a place in Time’s ranking of the 100 most influential people in the world. As evidence, propagandists cite a short video from BBC News, where they broadcast the results of the Bellingcat investigation. It's a lie.

StopFake analysts found that neither Bellingcat nor BBC News reported that the official’s place in the ranking was obtained through corruption. This is proven by a banal search on the websites of both media.

This is not the first time that propagandists have referred to Bellingcat to give their words credibility, despite the fact that this organization is recognized as a “foreign agent” and “undesirable” in Russia, and propagandists regularly accuse the investigators of political bias and manipulation.

Pro-Russian resources are distributing a “video report” allegedly from the Euronews  channel that French President Emmanuel Macron is being threatened to force an escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Citing Bellingcat journalists, the authors report that Macron is being “blackmailed with an intimate video”.

However, this is actually fake. Neither Euronews nor Bellingcat published such a video report. This was reported by specialists from the VoxCheck project. There is no news on the Euronews and Bellingcat websites about how the French President is being blackmailed.

In the Euronews “report” all the footage is taken from open sources. So, if you check the first frames from the video in a reverse search, it turns out that they were taken on March 15, 2024 during the meeting of the leaders of France, Germany and Poland - Macron, Scholz and Tusk - in Berlin.

Another shot of Macron was taken from his 60 minutes interview in 2022.

In addition, the fake report also quotes French political scientist Olivier Paquet as allegedly confirming that American intelligence regularly uses blackmail against other politicians. However, the political scientist did not make such a statement - at least, it is not in open sources.

Bellingcat previously denied that its investigators were mentioned in another fake video that was passed off as a BBC report. Using the logos of the world's leading media (Euronews, Politico, Reuters), such fakes about Ukraine or the West are regularly created. By distributing this particular fake video, Russian propaganda is trying to minimize international support for Ukraine in the war against Russia. Previously, we refuted information that Euronews allegedly showed a story that the statement of the Ukrainian Embassy in France angered French farmers.

An alleged story from the BBC is being circulated online, which states that Valerii Zaluzhnyi allegedly received $53 million for abandoning “his ambitions in politics”. And Bellingcat investigative journalist Hristo Grozev allegedly studied the details of this agreement and also confirmed information about the receipt of money. It's a lie.

The VoxCheck analysts examined the case and found that the fake robes cut out parts from different recordings and edited them into one video. Journalist Eliot Higgins also called the recording fake.

In fact, the BBC did not publish such a story on its social media pages. We also did not find this entry on the Bellingcat investigative page. While the head of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, on his X page called this video fake. Moreover, in another message, Higgins indicated that Hristo Grozev has not worked for Bellingcat for more than a year. Therefore, he could not comment on anything on behalf of the organization.

Propagandists spreading pro-Russian rhetoric on social networks are distributing a video allegedly made by a team from the British broadcaster BBC. It claims that Bellingcat investigators have obtained documents linking US President Joe Biden's son Gunter Biden to the production of church supplies in Ukraine. According to these data, Gunter Biden, with the help of his assistant, collaborating with a Ukrainian manufacturer of church supplies, monopolized their sales in 2020. However, this is fake.

The VoxCheck fact-checker drew attention to it. They found that Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins responded to the video by calling it another Russian fake. In addition, there is no information about this on the official Bellingcat website or the official BBC YouTube channel. The fake video was released on January 6, 2024, but the design of the British media looks completely different. For example, the original BBC videos have black text on a white background, surrounded by a red frame.

The video also mentions the Ros-Vinnytsia enterprise, which is associated with Gunther Biden and is called a monopolist in the church supplies market, but on the Internet you can find many advertisements for the sale of church utensils from companies that are not its subsidiaries. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Biden’s son or his representatives are not among the owners of Ros-Vinnytsia.

Propagandists are spreading this fake news to support their narrative about the Bidens' corruption in Ukraine. It is especially relevant in the context of the election campaign before the US presidential elections in 2024. Detector Media wrote about a conspiracy theory in this regard.

Propagandists spreading pro-Russian rhetoric on social networks are distributing a video with the symbols of the British language corporation BBC, which claims that Ukraine allegedly spent $1.2 billion in 2023 to create fakes about the victories of the Ukrainian army at the front. The order, according to the video, was carried out by one of the largest PR companies in Britain. Propagandists claim that, as a result, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andrii Yermak, allegedly “refused to renew the contract for 2024 with the British”, since their activities “did not help in any way to increase the attractiveness of mobilization in Ukraine”. They say that the money went down the drain or “was stolen according to the old Ukrainian tradition”. The video claims that this information was discovered by the independent international research team Bellingcat. However, this is a fake.

Analysts from the StopFake project drew attention to it. They found that the BBC had never published such a video on its social networks. This video is likely fake. The attackers deliberately crystallized the logo of the British television company and their design for propaganda purposes. To create the video, footage from open sources was used (in particular, an image of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi and Andrii Yermak) and stock videos (in particular, with people in suits shaking hands). Propagandists used archival photographs of Ukrainian military personnel taken before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The portion of the video purported to be Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins talking about his “investigation” was taken from his #ConflictZone interview with DW (December 2022 issue), where Higgins is actually talking about the Russian disinformation against Ukraine and the activities of Russian spies in the West. Official information on Bellingcat resources also does not contain any information about the investigation that propagandists refer to. Previously, Higgins noted on his X (formerly Twitter) account that propagandists had already attributed false statements to Bellingcat several times.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, in order to cover up the war crimes of the Russian army in Ukraine and create a false impression among the world public about the failures of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the battlefield, Kremlin propaganda has been actively spreading the narrative that Ukraine is creating fake content about the war in Ukraine. They say that Ukraine lies to its citizens, which means there is no point in trusting it.

This information is disseminated by pro-Kremlin resources. In this “news”, propaganda  refers to the British broadcasting corporation BBC, which published the corresponding video. The information itself is distributed in several versions. The first piece of propaganda allegedly attaches a BBC video with text about accusations against the head of the Servant of the People faction. It says that the case is likely to be investigated by the International Criminal Court, and information about this was received by the BBC, as well as the research group Bellingcat. In the second version, only a screenshot from the same video is attached. All this is done in the corporate style of the British broadcaster. However, this is fake.

Experts on the StopFake project studied this case. They managed to find out that the information was not true. Journalists from Newtral and Checkyourfact, who checked the video, also came to the conclusion that it was fake.

Firstly, the video in question says that one of those who received information about the investigation is BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh. It should be noted that such a journalist really exists, and he is engaged in fact-checking. However, on his page on the social network X, the journalist himself said that the video being distributed was fake.

Secondly, the incorrect spelling of David Arakhamia’s last name in the video indicates that the material is likely fake. In the accompanying text he writes “Arahmia”, but in English the surname of the head of the Servant of the People faction should be written as Arakhamia. In addition, a search on the official BBC website for the surname Arahmia does not yield any results.

Thirdly, on the same official website of the BBC, on the social networks X and Facebook, on YouTube there is no video publication published by propaganda. Propagandists once again used the corporate style of the world's leading media, in this case the BBC, to create yet another fake story about Ukraine.

This is not the first time that Russian propaganda has used the corporate design style of reputable foreign media to publish its fake news. Previously, we refuted information that the German media Deutsche Welle allegedly distributed a video about an anti-Ukrainian flash mob that took place in Poland.

Russian media, broadcasting pro-Kremlin rhetoric, spread the information that Putin said that Russia still does not use cluster munitions in Ukraine. “If they are used against us, we reserve the right to mirror actions”, the Russian president said. It's fake.

The fact-checkers of The Insider media drew attention to the case. On February 25, 2022, the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch reported on the strike of a Russian ballistic missile 9M79 fired by the Tochka-U complex on a hospital in Vuhledar. It was equipped with a warhead filled with 9N123K cluster munitions. As a result, 4 people died.

On February 28, 2022, investigative journalists from Bellingcat tracked the use of cluster munitions by Russia in Ukraine. And already at the end of March 2022, the chairman of the UN Human Rights Council, Michelle Bachelet, said that Russia had used cluster munitions 24 times at that time. The attack on the Kramatorsk railway station on April 8, 2022, which killed 58 civilians and wounded about 100, was also carried out by Tochka-U.

Russia discredits Ukraine and tries to make it guilty of the war. They say that it is the Ukrainians who are the aggressors, and Russia was forced to enter the war and use cluster munitions. Earlier, we refuted the fake that Ukraine does not have the right to use cluster munitions because it signed the convention in 2008.

During the briefing, the head of the radiation, chemical, and biological defense forces of the Russian Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Ihor Kyrylov, showed slides of photos that were supposed to prove that Ukraine was creating a "dirty bomb." The next day, one of the photos was recognized as a photo of radioactive substances from Slovenia. It was made in 2010 and belonged to the Slovenian Radioactive Waste Agency (ARAO). The Government of Slovenia announced it on Twitter.

However, it turned out that other photos from this presentation have nothing to do with Ukraine. It was discovered by Benjamin Strick, director of investigations at the Center for Information Resilience, and Elliott Higgins, founder of Bellingcat. Moreover, the two photos show Russian research facilities, which the Russian Ministry of Defense passes off as Ukraine's "research reactors." One photo shows the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant, named after Kurchatov, located in the Sverdlovsk region; the other photo shows the Novosibirsk chemical concentrate plant, which specializes in the production of nuclear fuel for power and research reactors.

The photo, signed as "Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, Institute of Nuclear Research at the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv - Uragan thermonuclear installations, BBP-M reactor," shows a Russian reactor located at the Boris Konstantinov Institute of Nuclear Physics in St. Petersburg. The photo captures the moment Vladimir Putin initiated the reactor's start-up via video link. Other images are no less intriguing: one of them shows an artistic Syrian state film about the "falsification of chemical attacks by the White Helmets." Russian propaganda has already used this footage specifically to prove that the White Helmets had their movie theater to shoot "fakes." Although fact-checkers quickly discovered it was footage from a pro-Assad feature film. Another footage shows the panic in New York on 9/11. Finally, the last frame shows the forced displacement of Syrians from Damascus, organized by Russian forces. The world didn't believe the fake about the "dirty bomb" which had created Russia. Read more about what a "dirty bomb" is and why Putin wants such a fake here.

Russian media claim that Ukraine itself launched a missile attack on the Amstor shopping center in Kremenchuk. It was allegedly done so that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking at the G7 summit, would have the opportunity to talk about even greater atrocities of Russia and argue why Ukraine needs much more money and weapons from Western partners. In particular, it was claimed by the Russian propagandist Volodymyr Solovyov. However, it is not true.

As US vs DISINFO fact-checkers write, there is ample evidence that it was Russian pilots who struck the shopping center in the city of Kremenchuk. The command of the Ukrainian Air Force established that the X-22 missiles were launched from Tu-22 M3 long-range bombers in the sky over Russia. The bombers took off from an airfield in the Kaluga region and launched missiles while flying over the Kursk region of Russia. The investigation of the Bellingcat group also proves that Russia launched a missile attack on a shopping center with civilian visitors. Also, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine reported that the names of the Russian pilots who attacked the shopping center are already known.

Russia is trying to justify its guilt for a missile attack on a civilian object in which peaceful citizens were. Versions of the events in Kremenchuk from the media and official sources differ. In particular, the Ministry of Defense of Russia recognized the launch of a missile strike with a "high-precision weapon" on the city of Kremenchuk. However, it was noted that a military object was hit. According to their statement, a Western weapon exploded in the warehouse, which caused a fire in a nearby shopping center, which was closed. Nevertheless, this version is also not valid because there was not a single military facility with Western weapons near the mall.

The photo was actively spreading on Twitter the other day, but Bellingcat investigators established that the photo was from Libya, not Ukraine. According to the original source, a toy bear with a homemade bomb containing a mortar shell tied to it was found in Tripoli in June 2020.