Message Putin's arrest warrant issued as sanctions against Russia do not work

Such reports appeared in the Russian propaganda media. Their authors argue that the sanctions against Russia do not seem to be working and everything indicates that the sanctions have reached their peak or bottom. Like, the West is disappointed with the ineffectiveness of the sanctions, which is why the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Volodymyr Putin.

Analysts of the EU vs Disinfo project drew attention to the case in the network. Analysts are convinced that messages that do not work are part of Russia's strategy to avoid responsibility for its own war crimes. Messages that Western sanctions do not work appeared in the information space last spring. Then the propagandists assured the audience that sanctions harm countries that impose them more than Russia itself. Like, because of these sanctions, both Ukraine and the EU countries will freeze in winter. But the Russians will be fine.

Western experts are indeed examining the effectiveness of sanctions. However, the International Criminal Court's warrant for Volodymyr Putin's arrest is not an escalation of Western pressure on Russia because sanctions don't seem to be working. An arrest warrant was issued in the case of the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. That is, the European Union expressed support for the investigations of the ICC prosecutor.

Fake Joe Biden admitted that Putin can not be defeated

Such messages are spread by Russian propaganda media and telegram channels broadcasting pro-Russian rhetoric. As proof of their words, the authors of the messages add an audio recording that they tried to pass off as a “leak” from a meeting of US President Joseph Biden with American congressmen that was closed to the press. Allegedly, Biden officially admitted at this meeting that Putin and Russia cannot be defeated. However, this is fake.

The StopFake fact-checkers drew attention to the case. As it turned out, the propagandists are referring to the audio, which they call “the leak of a conversation between the President of the United States and American congressmen to the network”, however, a male voice that has only a slight resemblance to Biden’s voice sounds on the 15-second recording.

However, the audio recording, according to fact-checkers, does not sound like the voice of President Biden, but his imitation. “StopFake offered to listen to the audio to several Americans, and they all said with confidence that English is not native to the person they are trying to pass off as Biden's words. The audio, allegedly proving the revelation of President Biden, does not sound at all like the voice of the American president, but a clumsy fake with gross phonetic errors”, the fact-checkers write.

However, the dissemination of such fakes is beneficial for Russian propagandists in order to once again show that no one supposedly believes in the victory of Ukraine including its devoted partners. They say that everyone has long understood that there is no point in fighting against Russia, because it is not victorious. Thus, propagandists seek to convince the audience that victory is definitely for Russia.

Message Zelenskyi could have stopped the war, but the West did not let him do it

Telegram channels from a network supervised by Russian intelligence spread the message that President Zelenskyi allegedly could have held talks with Putin during the Beijing Olympics as early as February, so the war would not have started. But Ukraine's Western partners seem to have banned Zelenskyi from going to Beijing, because they “had their own plans for Ukraine”. This is manipulation.

The information that Zelenskyi was supposedly banned from going to Beijing is spread with reference to an article in the Financial Times, which, citing sources, says: Putin did not warn Chinese President Xi Jinping about plans for a Russian invasion of Ukraine. And Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Le Yucheng was even demoted because he could not foresee the invasion. This Financial Times story denies the earlier notion that China has asked Putin not to go into war in Ukraine before the Olympics are over.

In this material, there is no mention of a possible visit or negotiations between Zelenskyi and Putin at all. And there are no facts or arguments in favor of the theory that Zelenskyi wanted to leave for Beijing or planned to do so, but someone or something prevented him.

At the same time, it is known that before Putin's trip to Beijing, his press secretary Pieskov reported that Putin did not plan to meet with anyone other than the head of China, including due to COVID restrictions. A few days before Putin's visit to China, Russian Foreign Minister Serhii Lavrov offered Zelenskyi to meet with Putin in Moscow, St. Petersburg or Sochi, but immediately warned that Donbas or Crimea's ownership could not be topics of discussion. Zelinskyi refused such an offer, and later said that he did not plan to visit Beijing - instead, he had meetings scheduled in Kyiv with representatives of Ukraine's allied countries.

Fake In café Pohrebok opened in Berlin people drink to Putin's health

A message appeared on pro-Russian anonymous telegram channels that the Pohrebok (A cellar) café opened in Berlin, the advertisement of which became viral immediately after it appeared on the network.

This café, according to propagandists, is allegedly Russian and they glorify Putin, drink to his health, and Berliners like it, which is why advertising has become so popular.

“The advertisers fantasized about the consequences of the coming European winter. In their opinion, next year Putin will be signed on German television as Chancellor of Europe. Visitors argue about his role in history: "It was he who liberated our Scholz!", "Europe is humiliated!", "Instead, we no longer supply arms to anyone", "Yes, thanks to him we have freedom!". As a result, everyone agrees that thanks to Putin, there are delicious pancakes and authentic kvas from Pohrebok in Berlin”, the propagandists write. However, there is no such café in Berlin. As the StopFake fact-checker writes, the so-called “viral advertising”, in which the Germans drink to Putin, is distributed exclusively on Russian websites and in the Russian-language segment of social networks. The actors in the video are also non-native German speakers and speak with a very strong Russian accent. That is, the so-called advertising is just a staging. And you can't really advertise a place that doesn't exist. However, with the help of such fakes, propagandists create the appearance of support for Putin's policies in Europe.

They say that the Europeans have long understood that their leaders are weak and are leading the EU to collapse, while Russia's policy is strong and the EU will not stand without its help. In the so-called commercial, propagandists also use the thesis of a cold winter that will destroy the Europeans, because the EU leadership allegedly does not think about citizens when it imposes sanctions against Russia. Thus, the Russians create the appearance of the excessive importance of Russia. Like, other countries will not be able to do anything without its help.

Manipulation Putin's ideas are becoming increasingly popular in the West, which has been recognized in the USA

The Russian mass media publish news with headlines from which it follows that "Putin's ideas" are becoming increasingly popular in the West. Moreover, they cite Putin's words from September 30, in which he talked about the "breakdown of Western hegemony" and "the inadmissibility of the third sex."

In fact, as StopFake pointed out, the Russian news regarding the article in The Washington Post titled "Leaders of democracies increasingly follow Putin in gravitating toward authoritarianism." So the article, of course, is not about Putin's crazy ideas about the "third sex," which are becoming increasingly popular in the West. The article states that rapid changes, social stratification, and new technologies have made the world so complex that people look for simple answers. First, they listen to the opinions of right-wing populist, authoritarian leaders who pretend to be "strong and tough guys." The article mentions Donald Trump, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, among others. The analytical article points out that a new wave of right-wing populists came to power, taking advantage of the difficult economic situation which Putin himself arranged. Instead, it isn't about Putin's fabrications regarding historical "claims" and "geopolitical calculations."

Manipulation The US military is discussing the assassination of Vladimir Putin

This information was spread by Russian publications concerning the American magazine Newsweek. Allegedly, the military doesn`t agree with US President Joe Biden on deterring Russia exclusively by non-nuclear means. He said that the American military believed that it would be necessary to "hit the Russians with a hammer" and prepare "a blow to kill Putin in the heart of the Kremlin."

Russian propagandists took the quotes out of context. In fact, the Newsweek article said that “Biden believes non-nuclear threats will stop Putin. His military doesn't think so." It refers to a disagreement over the role of American nuclear weapons and the most effective way to deter Vladimir Putin. The article points out that Washington "told the Russians at a very high level that there would be catastrophic consequences for Russia if they used nuclear weapons in Ukraine."

Moreover, their unprecedented threats are just a reaction to Putin's equally unprecedented speech about a nuclear strike. Russian propagandists spread the thesis that the USA is preparing a nuclear attack on Russia and the assassination of Putin to justify any decisions of Putin and the crimes of the Russian army on the territory of Ukraine, allegedly for protection. More details.

Fake The Russians used the "newest laser weapon" for the first time in Belgorod

Russian telegram channels, in particular "voyenkory", as well as a network of telegram channels controlled by Russian intelligence, spread dozens of messages about the use or preparation for the use of the "newest laser complex - Peresvit".

The messages scared the readers of the unknown but catastrophic consequences of the use of weapons, while the "voyenkory" rejoiced and waited for rehabilitation after the defeats in the Kharkiv, Kherson, and Luhansk regions. And they spread photos of light poles shining into the sky - both in Belgorod and in other cities of Russia, for example, Moscow. Some media even described how the laser complex "blinded the NATO satellites" and stopped working.

However the propagandists spread a fake: in the photos taken in the cities of Russia, one of the most common types of the halo is a light pole. It is a natural atmospheric phenomenon that occurs when light reflects off microscopic ice crystals in the air, mostly from the Sun and Moon. Halos come in almost any shape, with nearly a hundred varieties recorded, but the most common is the circle around the Moon and the pillars of light at sunset. Moreover, pillars can arise from other light sources, for example, powerful lighting devices.

Little else is known about the Russian "newest laser complex". Putin announced its appearance in 2018, and hypothetically this complex should interfere with the operation of satellites functioning at an altitude of up to 1.5 thousand kilometers, but there is no reliable data on the testing or use of this complex, as well as evidence that it exists at all.