Such information is spread by Russian propaganda. However, this is not true. According to the head of the youth and sports department of the Izium City Council, Maksym Strelnyk, the enemy is spreading this due to the lack of military success on the Izium front.

"It's a lie. Our army heroically defends Raisins and does not allow the enemy to enter the southern part of the city. The demarcation line now runs along the Seversky Donets River. Still, with the help of local collaborators, the Russian occupiers learned about the ford across the river and are now able to reach the southern shore. However, our defenders immediately meet them and send them all to hell," the statement reads. Information about the fake was also confirmed by the head of the Kharkiv OVA, Oleh Synegubov.

According to the Center for Combating Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, the materials of the opposition to the Putin regime refer to allegedly separatist plans of the Ukrainian allies regarding the territory of our state. In particular, such reports refer to the danger of the introduction of peacekeeping missions on the territory of Ukraine, as it seems to end with the "division of the territory of Ukraine" - the rollback of the territories to the state of 1939.

"Among the countries that, like Russia, seem to infringe on the territorial integrity of Ukraine, pro-Kremlin pseudo-analysts call Hungary, Romania and even Poland. After the de facto defeat of a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine and unsuccessful attempts to hold pro-Russian rallies in Serbia, Bulgaria, Armenia, and Syria, the enemy proceeded to unsuccessful demonization of individual countries. Information infusions of this kind only show that the Russian disinformation and propaganda ecosystem continues to fail, "the Center said in a statement.

The so-called map of "cities that will be bombed by Russia" is being distributed on Telegram channels. Such reports say that the map was allegedly created on the basis of British intelligence.

However, this is a fake. In fact, the image of the map used in such messages was created in the framework of Ukraine's Independence Day celebration. This is the map of prohibited places for drone flights.

This message is regularly spread by the russian propagandists. For example, it has been repeatedly mentioned by the Russian president Volodymyr Putin, Foreign Intelligence Service director Serhiy Naryshkin and others. By this narrative, Volodymyr Putin in particular, is trying to justify a full-scale military invasion.

However, this is fake. According to StopFake, Volodymyr Putin thinks that one of the main reasons of the full-scale war against Ukraine is salvation of Donbas people from genocide. For the last 2 weeks, Putin has mentioned 3 times “14 000 civilians died in Donbas” who, in his opinion, were killed by “Ukrainian nationalists”. However, there is no such data about the victims among civilians on the Donbas territory that is temporarily occupied by Russia. This fact is proved by the official data from the UN and even by the reports of the ombudsman from the so-called "Donetsk People’s Republic".

More information

Russian media and pro-Kremlin telegram channels report that the Ukrainian military allegedly fired on Rubizhne in the Luhansk region to "create a picture for the West" about the Russian aggression. The head of the Luhansk Regional State Administration, Serhii Haidai, said that the Russian occupiers were cynically destroying residential areas and killing civillian Ukrainians. According to him, in particular, at least 27 houses in Rubizhne were caught fire on the night of March 17.

In addition, the National Guard of Ukraine refuted Russian media reports that the city was allegedly controlled by the Russian military. "Our guardsmen send greetings from Rubizhne in Luhansk region. They were genuinely surprised and laughed a lot when they saw a circus show in Russian news that the city had been "cleansed" by Chechens and terrorists from ORDLO (the uncontrolled portions of the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts). They say that the city was guarded, is guarded and will be guarded by Ukrainian servicemen, border guards and police, and they do not surrender it to the occupiers," the statement says.

The information has been spread on social media that allegedly according to the data of the International Committee of the Red Cross and reports of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Ukraine "suffers enormous losses in manpower." According to StopFake, the publications are supplemented with infographics, which show alleged losses among the Ukrainian military. At the same time, neither the Ministry of Defense, nor the Armed Forces, nor other government agencies publish the number and names of soldiers who died as a result of a full-scale Russian invasion. On March 12th alone, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that 1,300 Ukrainian servicemen had died since the beginning of the war.

Oleksandr Vlasenko, a media relations specialist at the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that the ICRC did not announce the figures or estimate the death toll on either side. He stressed that the International Committee of the Red Cross is a neutral organization focused on helping civilians affected by armed conflicts or violence.

Read more

Russian bots are spreading a fake that Mariupol residents do not need to leave the city and go to Zaporizhzhia. The Center for Counteracting Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine said that such reports disrupted the evacuation from the city. Russian propagandists also write that Zaporizhstal (metallurgical plant of Ukraine) and Zaporizhkoks (one of the largest Ukrainian coke and chemical producers) are allegedly "mined" and that "armed Banderites are hiding in the workshops." "This is another cynical lie of the occupiers! The Russian aggressor is trying to disrupt the evacuation of Mariupol residents to safe places and destroy as many true patriots of the city as possible by ruthless shelling of residential neighborhoods," the Center said.

Russian propaganda media widely disseminate such reports. However, all this is not true.

According to StopFake fact-checkers, most refugees from Mariupol fleeing barbaric shelling by Russian troops travel to Ukrainian cities controlled by the Ukrainian government.

Read more

The Russian newspaper ‘Pravda’ spread a fake that three employees of the Tennessee National Guard were killed in the occupied part of the Donetsk region. The National Guard Buro has denied this information, saying that the names and photos of the U.S. military were taken from an article posted on the Pentagon's DVIDS website in 2018.

Russian propaganda spreads these narratives in different languages, trying to sow panic among Ukrainians and convince them that the world can change its mind about Russia because of its dependence on Russian oil and gas. The Center for Combating Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine refuted these reports and reminded that the world already has experience overcoming the oil crisis. In 1973, Europe and the United States successfully abandoned Arab energy. The Center also noted that Germany, Poland, the Norwegian company Equinor, the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the German company Uniper have decided to stop financing the construction of Russia's Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline.

The Center for Countering Disinformation reports that this is a fake. "In reality, this action did not take place. The person depicted in the collage is unknown to either the channel or the audience. The photo collage has all the signs of a false image that can be seen with the naked eye," the Center told the TV channel.

The fake came after the editor of Russia's First Channel, Marina Ovsyannikova, broke into a live broadcast with a poster with anti-war slogans.

Russia's Defense Ministry and Russian media are spreading fake reports that Azov fighters "could have held civilians hostage" at the Mariupol Drama Theater, but that Russian aircraft allegedly did not bomb the building and "did not see it as a target for destruction." Russian propagandists accuse Azov of this, which allegedly mined and blew up the theatre.

Russian aircraft launched an airstrike on the Mariupol Drama Theater, the city's largest shelter for civilians. Mariupol City Council said that a Russian plane deliberately dropped a bomb on the building, resulting in the entrance to the bomb shelter being destroyed. Information about the victims is being clarified.

Pro-Russian telegram channels spread information that rumours about Zelensky's quick escape are well-founded. Such reports assure, that the President of Ukraine may go to Brussels to meet with US President Biden, who will visit Belgium on March 24. Such texts predict that Kyiv will be blocked in a few weeks, and Zelensky will not be able to return there after the meeting.

There is no reason to claim this. There is also no official information that would confirm the planned meeting between Biden and Zelensky.

Russian propaganda media disseminate such information regarding the Russian Ministry of Defense. Such reports say that most Ukrainians have always advocated for good relations with Russia, and about 15 million "still have strong ties with the Russian Federation." The text also lists the areas in which friendship and assistance from Russia are allegedly most sought after.

However, this is fake. According to StopFake, the Russian Defense Ministry does not say based on which information these conclusions were made. Instead, according to Ukrainian national polls, most respondents believe that Russia's goal of invading Ukraine is destroying the Ukrainian people.

Read more

Russian propagandists are spreading a fake that Time journalist Brent Reno, who was killed in Irpen, worked for US intelligence and has experience participating in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Brent Reno worked on the TIME Studios project on the global refugee crisis. He came to Irpen to film reports on the city's evacuation and to photograph the aftermath of the Russian shelling.

Despite the confirmed circumstances of the shelling of journalists, Russia is lying that the American journalist was allegedly killed by "Ukrainian Nazis". Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser to the head of the President's Office, said, that Russian propaganda was questioning Renault's status as an American journalist to reduce the tragedy and lie to Ukraine. The Center for Combating Disinformation added, that this case demonstrates that Russia is doing everything possible to prevent journalists from recording war crimes against the Ukrainian population.

Russian propaganda media disseminate such information. The reports claim that the Territorial Defence Forces units in the town of Volnovakha planned an attack on the territories not under Ukraine's control. It is also stated that "all children and patients were allegedly evicted" from schools and hospitals to accommodate the units' personnel.

However, this is a fake, which was refuted by the fact-checkers from StopFake and found out that the published documents do not confirm this and refute the thesis about the "Ukrainian attack on Donbas". Read more

Such information is disseminated on social networks, telegram channels and Viber chats. The authors of such reports note that a car is driving in the region, the passengers of which are asking for the addresses of military units to deliver food there allegedly. However, the text asks for "inquisitive" to report to the police or territorial defence immediately.

According to the fact-checkers of the "Liar" project about the SBU data in the Rivne region, all this is not true.

Read more

Volyn telegrams and Viber chats spread reports about Israeli intelligence, which reported that Russia increased its military contingent in Brest. Such reports argue that this could mean that the occupiers are preparing to take control of the Brest-Lutsk-Ternopil-Chernivtsi road to cut off arms supplies from Poland and Romania.

The fact-checkers of the Liar project refuted this information. "Adviser to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Arestovych reassures residents of the western regions. He says the Russian army will not have the resources to attack another area. He stated this in one of the broadcasts on the "Direct" TV channel, "the statement reads.

Read more

Such information in the media is disseminated by Kremlin propaganda. For example, such reports say that leaflets calling for the "expulsion of Ukrainian Nazis" are distributed in Poland. According to StopFake, pro-Kremlin propaganda has been using the same illustration with the same appeal since 2016, which only confirms the systematic and purposeful approach to inciting hostility towards Ukrainian citizens.

"Agitprop assures that anti-Ukrainian leaflets are being pasted in Poland. However, the same illustration propagandists try to pass off as such "leaflets" is repeated in all reports. The message is mostly spread in anonymous groups Telegram, the Russian social network "VKontakte". The fact that these actions are planned is evidenced by the fact that dozens of profiles of seemingly ordinary users and groups publish messages of the same content. At the same time, some of the users who spread it, according to their information about themselves, are related to the Russian armed forces," the fact-checkers note.

Read more

The information is being spread on the wen that evacuated children who lost their parents in areas with no combat operations can be quickly adopted. In particular, the reports say that children can be adopted in a few hours in Ivano-Frankivsk region. However, the head of the regional military administration Svitlana Onyschuk denies such information.

“There is information that a child can be adopted in two or three hours, even without documents. This is not true. The adoption procedure remains unchanged. All the children we are currently under supervision. Our educators also take care of them. They are examined by doctors. We take care of children as if they were our own,” Onyschuk said.

Pro-Russian telegram channels are spreading this thesis, criticizing the new law on ensuring civilians' participation in Ukraine's defence. Such reports argue that civilians can allegedly kill anyone if they believe that "the victim committed aggression against Ukraine." The same law stipulates that civilians may use weapons in the same way as the military ("the use of firearms by civilians is similar to the use of weapons by servicemen in carrying out their tasks to repel armed aggression against Ukraine").

In addition, the alleged "abolition" of the Criminal Code is a blatant lie. After all, other laws - №7116 and №7124 - increased criminal liability in Ukraine, namely for looting and treason or sabotage.

Russian media and propagandists have spread fake information that the March 9 shelling on the maternity hospital in Mariupol was staged. Propagandists spread similar statements that there were no staff or women in labor present at the maternity hospital. Instead they allege that only Azov fighters had been based there. The Russian media referred to a fake report on the Russian website Lenta.Ru (published before the bombing of Mariupol), which stated that the city maternity hospital №2 in Mariupol had been seized by "fighters of either the Armed Forces or Azov battalion.” Russia 1 further reports that the maternity hospital had been bombed by Right Sector fighters.

In reality, the air raid on the maternity hospital by Russian occupiers was confirmed by the President of Ukraine, local authorities, as well as the police. As a result of the air strike, 17 people (children, women, doctors) were injured, three died, including one child – a girl. The police have launched an investigation under Article 438 (violation of the laws or customs of war) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

Pro-Russian telegram channels spread the thesis that the Russian military could cross rivers without bridges, so the Ukrainian military vainly destroyed them. In such reports, the actions of the Ukrainian army are called the destruction of Ukraine, and the Russian military is praised because, according to propagandists, they can cross the river on military equipment.

The Ukrainian military blocked bridges to prevent the occupiers from advancing and occupying new Ukrainian cities.

In particular, according to the Center for Combating Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, in Berdyansk, the occupiers are distributing leaflets, the main narrative of which is the need for Ukraine to join Russia. Furthermore, the text of such leaflets speaks of Russia's alleged struggle against Nazi groups, including the Azov Regiment. The statement reads that the enemy presents all this as an unalterable version of events," the statement reads.

Propagandists are also conducting propaganda radio broadcasts in Mariupol. "The enemy is threatening the city's population, noting that the only way to survive is to stop resisting, surrender weapons and leave the city through ''humanitarian corridors'' created by Russia. But the propaganda methods of their propaganda of the 1940s do not work for Ukrainians," the Center reports.

Today in the Russian media, in particular in RIA Novosti, there was a fake that allegedly on the orders of Foreign Minister Viktor Lyashko in the "Pentagon laboratories in Ukraine" on February 24, the day Russia attacked Ukraine, destroyed the cultures of pathogens that they were stored. And that this "order" seems to be evidence of the development of components of biological weapons in Ukraine. Russian media also published photos of the documents - without the minister's signature and with many grammatical errors. There is no word in these "documents" about "secret experiments" or "biological weapons development", but only a list of pathogens stored in Ukrainian laboratories - as in other laboratories around the world - and claims that they were destroyed. The list of what was allegedly destroyed by "order of the Ministry of Health" includes anthrax, as well as diphtheria, candidiasis and common urinary tract infections. According to the DM, Minister Lyashko is now preparing to refute this fake.

UPDATED March 7: The Ministry of Health has denied reports of alleged "emergency cleanup of the US Department of Defense-funded military-biological program" and "destruction of particularly dangerous pathogens" at the Poltava and Kharkiv Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The fake about the existence of "US biological laboratories in Ukraine" was created in Russia during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych (2010 - 2014), and was actively spread in all countries of the former Soviet Union that joined the Nunn-Lugar program, under which the Pentagon allocated funds to modernize laboratories which working with various pathogens. Fakes about the creation of biological weapon in them were spread in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. At the same time, Russia was also a member of the same program until 2021. Covid and Viktor Medvedchuk (Ukrainian pro-Russian politician) gave a new life to the fake about the Pentagon's biological laboratories, claiming that it was through them that Ukrainians became ill with measles and that biological weapon being developed in them. Now the Russian Defense Ministry is spreading this fake again.