Russia's Defense Ministry is spreading a fake message that the Security Service of Ukraine is allegedly "preparing a provocation with the use of toxic substances against civilians with the support of Western countries."

The SBU denied the report and noted that the fake spread after the occupiers fired on a peace column near Mariupol and dropped a bomb on the city's drama theatre building. « "Such statements by the invaders are just an attempt to divert attention from another war crime. But no fakes will cover the genocide of civilians and the humanitarian catastrophe in Mariupol, which is being destroyed by Russian missiles and bombs,"the SBU said.

Russia's Defense Ministry claims that "at least 180 foreign mercenaries were killed and a large consignment of foreign weapons" destroyed due to Russian missiles hitting military installations in the Lviv region on the morning of March 13. The report refers to the shelling of the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in the village of Starychi, Yavoriv district, Lviv region.

In a comment to CNN, Markiyan Lubkivskyi, a spokesman for Ukraine's Defense Ministry, denied the presence of foreigners in the centre at all and called the fake "untrue and purely Russian propaganda." According to the Lviv Regional Military Administration, and 134 were injured in the shelling of the Yavoriv test site, where the centre is located.

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.

It's hard to believe, but Russia's Defense Ministry continues to report "findings" that seem to confirm the "development of biological weapons" in laboratories allegedly set up by the Pentagon in Ukraine. For example, on March 10, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had found evidence of "experiments with bat coronavirus", hinting that it was in Ukraine that they could create a covid. Earlier, the pro-Russian anonymous telegram channels and the Russian media wrote a lot about the fact that the COVID was created in Ukraine with the help of the Pentagon багато писали проросійські анонімні телеграм-канали та російські ЗМІ – the last wave of such fakes was at the end of 2020. But this time, the Russian Defense Ministry added more fantastic details. Now they have come up with a "project to study the transfer of pathogens of birds migrating between Ukraine and Russia," The Pentagon tried to create birds that would carry "African swine fever and anthrax" to Russia. Moreover, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, Foreign Minister Lavrov and propagandist Tina Kandilaki, all these viruses were "adapted to the Slavic ethnic group". For this purpose, biological samples collected in Ukraine were allegedly sent from Ukraine to the United States.

In general, the United States planned to use not only birds but also insects as weapons against the Russians: "Adaptation of viruses to the Slavic ethnic group in Ukrainian laboratories is the most terrible and dangerous threat to our country. There is no war worse: there is protection against a missile flying in our direction, but against a mosquito infected with polio or meningitis (no)… "- writes Kandilaki. Lavrov also announced today the creation of "ethnically oriented" biological weapons in Ukraine. However, Lavrov and the Russian Defence Ministry have not yet decided how mosquitoes will distinguish Slavic-Russians from Slavic-Ukrainians, and how migratory birds define Kandelaki's state borders.

It will be recalled that there have never been "American Pentagon bio laboratories" in Ukraine — this is a Russian fake, which has been circulating since 2010 and has been debunked many times. Only during the war in Ukraine was it denied by the Pentagon, the US State Department, EU representatives, the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.

This statement is spread in the Kremlin media with the emphasis that Ukraine is blackmailing the EU by cutting the transit of gas in order to obtain new arms supplies and air defense. According to StopFake, this is not true.

"Officially, representatives of the Ukrainian government say that any restrictions on gas supplies should be a part of a package of sanctions against Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine," the fact-checkers said.

Read more

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.

The telegram channels administered by the Russian services are widely spreading the message that Western countries will gradually abandon the sanctions imposed on Russia due to the attack on Ukraine. In particular, the Gossip Girl writes channel that while NATO "refuses to provide weapons and close the skies over Ukraine, the West does not even want to give EU candidate status. That's all you need to know about Europe's support!" There is a similar message about Great Britain.

There are no official grounds to say that Western countries refuse to help Ukraine and lift sanctions en masse. On the contrary, such a message is beneficial to propagandists to give the impression that "everything is gone" Ukraine was left without support in the fight against Russia.

Russian propagandists say that territorial defence detains, searches and inhumanely treats civilians for no reason. They give no evidence, but they keep repeating that the territorial defence consists of "criminals" with weapons.

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.

Manipulators involve the fact that Ukrainians are not evacuated from cities that are regularly under attack. Detector Media recorded such rhetoric on the fourth day of the war, but it is very dangerous to evacuate civilians in large numbers, both then and now, without green corridors.

The propagandists explain that Zelensky is deliberately making sacrifices among the civilians in order to maintain the image for the media and foreign partners. As if, that's how Ukraine is asking for weapons.

According to the Center for Combating Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, such fake is dispersed by enemy propaganda. “This lie has been spread in order to demoralize Ukrainians and break our powerful resistance to the Russian invasion! Now the world is more united than ever! We are given weapons, ammunition, planes, financial aid! And these are the real actions that everyone sees,” the Center says in a statement.

On March 3, there was information on social networks that new Edemus tags had appeared on Google maps in Kyiv en masse, with their help the Russian military targeted artillery shelling, missiles or air strikes.

The map shows Edemus as buildings of district administrations, hospitals, maternity hospitals, kindergartens, retirement homes. In fact, Edemus is a network of funeral services. The State Special Communications Service said that the information about the "new tags" is not true and stressed that Google in Ukraine has limited the ability to add new labels to maps. The appearance of such information in the Service is called an information-psychological operation to sow panic and misinformation among the population.

In fact, Freedom Square has been hit by a Russian cruise missile of the "Caliber" class, as a result third of the building of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration was destroyed, according to Stop Fake. Despite this, information spreads throught the network that on March 1, Ukraine deliberately fired a missile at Kharkiv. Adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko reports that a "Caliber" cruise missile has hit in Freedom Square. The combat radius of "Caliber" cruise missiles is about 2,500 km. There are no such missiles in the service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

They spread stories, supposedly from «witnesses», who are afraid to die not from Russian invaders but from armed Ukrainian citizens. Propagandists try to reassure people about those who joined the territorial defense. They claim territorial defenders as vigilantes, who now have legal weapons. Russian propaganda machine is trying to undermine people`s trust in territorial defense and disrupt the esprit of the Ukrainian defenders.

Photos of the alleged landing on Sofiivska Borshchahivka are being spread on social networks. Victor Tregubov, co-founder of the "Demokratychna sokyra" party and editor-in-chief of the "Petro i Mazepa" website, denied landing. According to him, the photo shows gaps from air defense shells. "Babel" also denied this information.

Some of them have calls to surrender weapons, fake information that Zelensky surrendered, threats. All this is not true. The Ukrainian army does not lay down arms, Zelensky does not flee the country. The Armed Forces hold the defense. In particular, in Kyiv, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, the night was difficult, but there are no Russian troops in the capital. There are sabotage groups in Kyiv, there have been several clashes. 35 people were injured, including two children.

The information that the Ukrainian army is retreating and surrendering weapons is spreading across the Internet. However, this is another fake. It was refuted by the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, who published a video address to Ukrainians. "There is a lot of fake information on the Internet now as if I'm calling for weapons to be laid down and de-evacuation. So: here I am, we will lay down no weapons, we will defend our state, because our weapons are our truth", Zelensky said.