The Russian news website REN.TV wrote that some branches of the US military industry are allegedly interested in delaying military actions on the territory of Ukraine because they receive substantial profit from this. At the same time, REN.TV quoted former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul as saying to Politico that President Vladimir Zelensky's entourage is allegedly an intermediary in this "scheme. McFaul himself is referred to by Russian propagandists as "a freelance adviser to Zelensky." In fact, according to StopFake, REN.TV took McFaul's quote out of context, significantly distorting what he said. Michael McFaul spoke to Politico about lobbying Ukraine's interests in the United States; his quote about Zelensky's entourage refers to interaction with the American media and the US political elite. Michael McFaul also denied StopFake was a "freelance adviser to Zelensky." "The article's author's claim that the U.S. military industry is interested in delaying military action in Ukraine is also manipulation. The Kremlin claims that the so-called "special operation" can only be stopped when the "demilitarization" of Ukraine is completed and Kiev "stops fighting," refuses to join any bloc. "" and recognizes Crimea as Russian and the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics as independent," StopFake writes. - Ukraine insists that the end of the war is possible only after the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the country and the provision of a number of security guarantees to Ukraine.

This information was disseminated by Russian propaganda media as early as April 4. In particular, the publication RIA Novosti. However, this is a fake. The Russian military could not have disarmed a single VDM on the territory of the Kyiv region on April 4, because as of April 2, according to the Ministry of Defense, the entire Kyiv region had already been liberated from the Russian occupants.

Information that during the war with Russia, Ukrainians have been completely cancelled from paying for utilities is spreading in social networks. In particular, in local Volyn communities on Facebook. However, this is a fake, attention has been drawn to it. In fact, according to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine resolution "Some issues of payment of housing and communal services during martial law" of March 5, 2022, until the termination or cancellation of martial law can not accrue and collect penalties. (fines, penalties), to terminate the provision of services in case of non-payment or payment not in full.

That is, the government has prohibited charging fines for late payment, as well as depriving consumers of services for arrears, but payment for utility services is not canceled. On the contrary, utility workers on the ground are asking people to pay on time so that businesses can function in war conditions.

According to the head of the Mykolaiv regional military administration (OVA) Vitalii Kim, such a claim has been spreading massively in social networks in recent days. However, Kim himself denies such information and says that the situation in Mykolaiv is under control. "We control the entry-exit, we know how many pieces of equipment there are. There are 15-20 of them there. There are battles, but we are not talking about hundreds of tanks. The command "to capture Mykolaiv in three days" - This is panic-mongering. And shelling is also for panic. This is what the enemy wants to achieve. Look at things realistically, analyze. Don't believe the fakes and take care of yourself," said Vitalii Kim.

This is the thesis spread by Russian propagandists, citing the words of American political analyst Jim Jatras. According to StopFake, Jim Jatras is one of the regular "talking heads" on Russian propaganda resources RT and Sputnik, and since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Jatras has stated that Ukraine is unlikely to exist as a state, and President Zelenskyy is likely to be president in exile. As the fact checker writes, he also claimed that Russian arguments in this war were more "weighty" and defended the Moscow Patriarchate and spread Russian disinformation about the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. "Thus, Jatras' comments are not something strange, but go along with Russian propaganda narratives about atrocities in Bucha and other cities in the Kiev region found after the region was de-occupied," StopFake fact checkers write. In addition, according to the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council, Russia continues to use so-called Western experts to spread its propaganda about Ukraine. Among them is former U.S. Army officer David Payne, who has cooperated with the Kremlin for many years. As the Center notes, during Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, this "expert" disseminated theses in the foreign media that "The event should stop supplying weapons to Ukraine so as not to provoke Russia into even more aggression" and "Ukraine should give Russia Crimea and Donbass to avoid World War III." "All of these statements have nothing to do with reality. The Kremlin has been building its propaganda campaign to discredit the civilized world for years, resorting to bribing and recruiting even Western officials," the Center adds.

Russian propaganda is spreading fake reports that Ukraine is allegedly blocking dozens of foreign civilian ships in its ports. According to StopFake, according to the International Maritime Organization, as of March 30, 86 merchant ships and approximately 1,000 sailors are blocked in Ukrainian ports and waters because of the Russian war. Earlier, the International Maritime Organization stated that it is Russia, not Ukraine, that is attacking commercial vessels, merchant ships and search and rescue ships in the Black and Azov seas. US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman confirmed on 29 March that Russia had attacked civilian foreign ships in the Black Sea. According to her information, Russia also bombed at least three civilian ships that were transporting goods from Black Sea ports.

Russian propaganda spreads a fake map of uranium deposits on Ukrainian territory as if to prove that Ukraine "carried out nuclear developments to blow up European security. The Center for Counteracting Disinformation countered: "Our state has large deposits of various minerals. But their presence is not equal to the presence of weapons of mass destruction which the Kremlin misinforms the population about. The center specified that with such fakes, Russia is trying to prepare an information field to justify its crimes, and is also trying to split the EU and NATO.

The fake story about Russian troops installing antennas to listen to the phone conversations of Ukrainians is actively spreading in the network again. We already wrote about it and gave a rebuttal. So far there is no confirmation about the installation of such equipment and the possibility of wiretapping the conversations of Ukrainians, reports the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection. Chairman of the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection Yurii Shchyhol said that all such statements turned out to be fakes and part of information and psychological operations, which were intended to intimidate Ukrainians, as well as to make Ukrainians stop reporting information about places of movement of enemy equipment. this is not the only case of spreading misinformation among citizens, previously spreading fakes that Ukrainians would receive phone calls at night from unknown numbers to target for airborne bombing.

This statement is circulated by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Gennady Gatilov, permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the UN office and international organizations in Geneva, said: "The documents confirm the fact that Germany is implementing its own military-biological program in Ukraine. Its purpose is to study the potential of deadly diseases, such as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, in Eastern Europe. Russia has long been misinformed that Ukraine is developing biological weapons. In reality, it is impossible to create "ethnic weapons. First of all, there are no biological (or any other) weapons in the world that affect only a certain ethnic group - science and technology have not advanced that far, and scientists do not expect breakthroughs in this direction in the near future. And no weapon or disease will be able to distinguish the DNA of the Ukrainians from that of the Russians, because the differences, although present, are insignificant: the Europeans are genetically homogeneous and among them there are about four subgroups, which may include representatives of completely different ethnicities (for example, the Baltic peoples, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Poles are included in one subgroup). Read more about how Russia misinforms Ukrainians and the world about biological weapons in Gala Sklyarevska's article "How Ukraine (according to Russia) is "preparing biological weapons" from fleas, mosquitoes and lizards.

This was reported in the Russian media, citing a video message from Oleksii Arestovych, advisor to the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, dated March 31. In fact, Arestovych said that there is no need to raise groundless, panic and "not to send out scary messages about a massive Russian strike".

In his thesis, he clarifies that the Russians will not shell not in order to "kill an MP of Ukraine or a journalist," but ""they will hit military-industrial complex facilities, even if they hit them, and infrastructure facilities.

His appeal does not say that Russia is shelling ONLY military infrastructure facilities. Oleksii Arestovych notes that they can hit both "military-industrial complex facilities" and "infrastructure facilities", i.e. it can include not only military but also industrial, social and even civilian infrastructure.

The advisor to the head of the OPU repeatedly noted that the Russian army "deliberately destroys civilian infrastructure". For example, during an April 1 briefing, he said: "The enemy continues to carry out air and missile strikes on critical infrastructure, military industry, military facilities and, unfortunately, continues to destroy residential neighborhoods in Mariupol, Kharkiv, Chernihiv. Chernihiv is a city that the enemy is trying to turn into a "second Mariupol.""

This was reported by the British edition of The Times, citing "internal documents of the Security Service of Ukraine. SBU spokesman Artem Dekhtiarenko denied the information: The SBU did not provide the media with any official information about cyberattacks from China and has nothing to do with the conclusions made public in the British publication. The State Service for Special Communications and Protection of Ukraine notes that cyber attacks on state information systems and critical information infrastructure facilities in Ukraine are carried out by Russian and pro-Russian hackers.

Such information spread in social networks. The command of the Air Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine denied information about the death of a talented fighter pilot Natalia Perakova. This was reported by the press service of the Command of the Air Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

This is reported by the Kremlin media, citing its own sources. This is not true. The U.S. is not talking about any use of Afghans as a military force and is not planning to send American troops to Ukraine.

The Afghan National Army (ANA) disbanded in 2021 after NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan and Taliban fighters entered the Afghan capital. Some Afghan soldiers were evacuated to the U.S., while others joined the Taliban or fled to neighboring countries.

On February 19, 2022, the U.S. reported that all evacuated Afghans had left McGuire-Dix Lakehurst Base, where they had been temporarily housed. There are indeed suggestions in the U.S. that an Afghan Legion could be formed from those willing to serve in the U.S. Army. But experts say that to be eligible for service in the U.S. armed forces, Afghans do not meet one of the basic requirements - that recruits must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States. So there is no discussion of using the Afghans as a military force in the United States at this point.

The U.S. is not going to send American troops to Ukraine, as President Joe Biden has repeatedly pointed out. Throughout Russia's war against Ukraine, the U.S. has been providing Ukraine with all kinds of military and medical assistance.

This is the claim of the French far-right politician Erika Zemmour, whose words are actively circulated in the Russian press. In fact, the leader of the Reconquista political party and candidate for the French presidency in 2022 is lying. Like his party colleague Marion Maréchal, back in early March she said that among the refugees from Ukraine "one-third are Africans and natives of North Africa". She, in turn, referred to an article in the newspaper Figaro, where the only anonymous source of the publication gave similar data. But according to the official statistics of the French Interior Ministry, of 26,000 people who arrived in France before March 31 as refugees from the war with Russia, less than 5% are not "Europeans". This data is given by the French radio RTL, which conducted its own fact-checking of the statements of far-right politicians. The article does not specify who these people are - foreign students who evacuated to Europe or citizens of Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and numerous Russian media have spread false information that allegedly Ukraine has informed Great Britain that it does not intend to comply with the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. the speaker of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Oleh Nikolenko, denied this fake:

"Russian intelligence does not stop spreading disinformation. Earlier it created fakes about allegedly thousands of Ukrainians seeking asylum in Russia, about inhumane treatment of Russian prisoners of war, about "workers" of Azovstal who "ask" to join the ranks of the Russian invading army. The SVR's claim about the Geneva Convention is another such fake," Nikolenko wrote on Facebook.

The purpose of the fake is to discredit Ukraine in the eyes of international humanitarian structures, says Nikolenko and reminds that Russia itself, unlike Ukraine, violates international law.

The Russian media spread a staged video in which an Azovstal employee in Mariupol allegedly talks about the "tyrants" from Azov, to whom he is going to take revenge for being left without a home. He also passionately thanks Vladimir Putin and intends to join the Russian army or police. According to the Center for Strategic Communications at the ICMP, Azovstal's personnel department denied that a man with this name and surname has never worked at the company. The Mariupol City Council called the man in the video an "actor".

Earlier, the Hrati newspaper reported that Mariupol residents forcibly deported to Russia upon arrival to the occupied territories are sent to filtration camps. There, they are photographed, fingerprinted, and their phone data is copied by FSB officers. The Russian publication Mediazone published proof that the video of the girl recounting Azov's crimes against civilians in Mariupol was recorded by an FSB officer and distributed to Russian media with the requirement not to specify the source of the video. The Russian media published it for their materials. The girl in the video also thanked Putin.

Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of Russia's National Defense Control Center, spewed another batch of fakes at a briefing. He claimed that "nationalist battalions" in Kharkiv are taking cars from the population, converting them into "bandermobiles" - and driving them around the city as "flying death squads." Mizintsev claims that the nationalists are randomly firing large-caliber machine guns at residential buildings, while civilians are hiding from them in basements. He also stated that it is impossible to leave Kharkov because the nationalist battalions are using the city's residents as human shields. "There is a critical humanitarian situation in the city," he added.

In fact, Kharkov residents are hiding in basements from artillery and bombing by the Russian army, it is still possible to evacuate from the city, the only reason for the humanitarian crisis is the invasion of Russian troops, and there are no bandermobiles.

Such messages circulated en masse in social networks during the air raid in the evening of March 31. People spread information like explosions and shelling. However, there was no shelling, said the head of the Regional Military Administration (OVA) of Lviv region Maxim Kozitsky.

"As it turned out, in one of the localities of the region workers of a gas extraction tower produced a controlled release of adjacent gases. During the release, a sound similar to an explosion was heard. There was also a partial fire. These events coincided with the announcement of an air alert," the Center for Strategic Communications reports with reference to the head of the Lviv OVA."

This is the information disseminated by Russian propaganda media. The reports claim that the Ukrainian Motor Sich Concern is developing the new bayraktars. They add that such devices will spray viruses from the air. ""In fact, we are talking about the development by the Kiev regime of means of delivery of biological weapons with the possibility of use against Russia,"" the reports say.

However, this is not true. As Ukrainska Pravda writes, no documentary or visual evidence of such a request has been cited in Russian propaganda. However, the activity of the so-called biolaboratories Russian propaganda recently cited as another reason for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. You can read more about the so-called biolaboratories at the link."

A video is floating on social networks that shows as if refugees from Ukraine have defaced a German train. In the video, a man from Germany complains that the Ukrainians left a lot of garbage in the cabin of the train and painted the walls with graffiti and pasted all kinds of stickers. However, according to VoxCheck, this is a fake. The train was not carrying refugees from Ukraine, but soccer fans. Read more.

The Russian media spread a report about the murder of Ukrainian sniper Olena Belozerskaya. A video is added to the reports, showing the body of some woman dressed in civilian clothes. In fact, Olena Bilozerska is alive. "Who died is unknown. It looks like a civilian," Olena Bilozerska wrote on her Facebook.

This thesis is spread by the Russian propaganda media, allegedly referring to the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. In such statements, the propagandists claim that three-quarters of all IT specialists in Ukraine - 200,000 - have left Ukraine since hostilities.

As StopFake writes, this is not the case. In fact, according to a survey conducted by the IT Ukraine Association, more than 70% of IT professionals work in safe regions of Ukraine, and another 16%, mostly women, work abroad. These data are generally confirmed by a survey conducted by the profile portal DOU: 61% of surveyed IT professionals moved to a safer place - 46% within Ukraine, and another 14% went abroad.

Russia's Defense Ministry has spread a fake that the Ukrainian military allegedly uses as a shelter for a synagogue in Uman. Russian propagandists also spread a photo where the military allegedly took weapons and ammunition from the synagogue.

The United Jewish Community of Ukraine has refuted this fake, saying that all synagogues and Jewish sites in Ukraine are used exclusively for their intended purpose, to carry out religious activities, or to help members of Jewish communities and the local population. "Even based on a photo published for provocative purposes, it is evident that the synagogue gates are closed, and no one is in it. The Rabbi Nachman Foundation in Uman confirms that the second-largest synagogue in Ukraine was closed from Rosh Hashanah (celebrated in September 2021) and has not been used since," the statement said.

Andriy Biletskyi, “National Corps” leader, debunked the fake of Russian propaganda that Kostyantyn Nemichev and Serhiy Velychko, battalion commanders of Kharkiv division of territorial defense of “Azov”, were taken prisoners. They recorded a video-answer for the occupants from Kharkiv where they called on Russians to surrender.

Chechnya Leader Ramzan Kadyrov told that he is in Mariupol. However, on March 28, pro-russian groups shared a photo where Kadyrov, surrounded by numerous guards, is praying at Pulsar gas station that belongs to Rosnafta. There are no such gas stations in Ukraine.