Kremlin propaganda fabricated a “news report” about a child allegedly killed by a Ukrainian serviceman in the Sumy region

Russian propaganda has once again accused Ukrainian servicemen of committing a serious crime, as part of the Kremlin’s long-standing narrative portraying the Armed Forces of Ukraine as “terrorists” and “killers”. Fact-checkers from the BezBrekhni project exposed this fabrication, which was partially based on a real tragedy.

To support the claim, propagandists used a screenshot allegedly taken from a Ukrainian media outlet, featuring the Ukrainian-language headline: “In the Sumy region, a serviceman threw a child out of a seventh-floor window”.

The accompanying text described the alleged crime in detail: a serviceman from the 71st Separate Jaeger Brigade, while on leave and heavily intoxicated, allegedly caused a disturbance, broke into the Skliar family’s apartment, and “pushed 13-year-old Ira out of a seventh-floor window”. The fake report also claimed that the serviceman had been detained and that the case had been transferred to the military prosecutor’s office.

Fact-checkers from BezBrekhni established that propagandists had used a genuine news report from the Sumy-based outlet Panorama and altered its headline.

The original headline read: “In the Sumy region, a child fell from a seventh-floor window”.

The original report concerned a tragic accident in Konotop. Journalists cited a Facebook post by the head of the Konotop City Council, Artem Semenikhin, who reported the death of 13-year-old schoolgirl and youth sports school student Ira Skliar “as a result of falling from the window of her own apartment”.

Thus, the original news story reported a tragic accident and suicide in which no servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were involved in any way. Propagandists altered the headline in order to create the image of a “criminal soldier” that suited their narrative.

In the world of propaganda, a quiet revolution has taken place: information operations that were once the exclusive domain of authoritarian governments and intelligence services are now increasingly outsourced to private firms. As noted by the fact-checking project EUvsDisinfo, disinformation and Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) have become a global business, providing authoritarian regimes with strategic reach and “plausible deniability”.

For decades, information operations were tightly controlled by states. The Soviet Union, for example, refined the practice of “disinformation”, while Russia institutionalized it through modern digital operations such as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

Over the past decade, however, this model has become commercialized. Disinformation has evolved into a profitable service offered by private companies with backgrounds in intelligence, military affairs, or marketing. These firms sell comprehensive FIMI campaign packages that include:

Outsourcing as a shield for authoritarian regimes

The use of non-state specialists provides authoritarian governments with two key advantages: efficiency and deniability. They increasingly outsource information operations to private intermediaries, shielding themselves from diplomatic and legal consequences.

This model allows manipulators to experiment with high-risk tactics – such as AI-generated content, hacking, or deepfakes – that would be politically or diplomatically explosive if carried out directly by state institutions.

“It is the information equivalent of using mercenaries: the client enjoys the benefits without bearing responsibility”, EUvsDisinfo writes.

Moreover, outsourcing enables “information laundering” – the concealment of the true origin of disinformation by routing it through private firms, fake accounts, and proxy media outlets.

Artificial intelligence: the new force multiplier of propaganda

The old model of “troll farms” – hundreds of young employees manually posting content online – is being replaced by AI-driven automation. Systems such as AIMS, developed by the firm “Team Jorge”, can manage thousands of fake accounts and generate multilingual content tailored to target audiences in real time.

What once required an entire building and hundreds of employees in Saint Petersburg can now be accomplished with a laptop.

The asymmetry of information warfare

The emergence of mercenary firms specializing in influence operations has created an asymmetric imbalance. Autocracies, protected by censorship and control, gain maximum reach with minimal risk. Democracies, constrained by transparency and the rule of law, face maximum vulnerability while having more limited means of defense.

EUvsDisinfo warns that the marketisation of disinformation is creating a global “grey zone” in which truth becomes optional and accountability elusive. As AI tools become cheaper and more powerful, these operations are likely to grow in both scale and sophistication.

The Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine has debunked another information manipulation spread by Russian propaganda Telegram channels. Hostile resources attempted to discredit Ukraine’s Defense Forces by publishing a fabricated “radio interception” allegedly containing orders to fire on their own troops.

The circulated “interception” supposedly features an order instructing a Ukrainian soldier to open fire on members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who were allegedly “retreating” from positions near Kupiansk.

According to the CCD, this is yet another fabrication by Russian propaganda. The “radio interception” was edited and assembled by Russian actors with the sole purpose of discrediting Ukraine’s Defense Forces and demoralizing Ukrainian society.

“The Ukrainian army does not have and has never had blocking detachments”, the Centre emphasized.

CCD experts note that such coercive methods and the existence of such units are characteristic of the Russian military itself, where they have been widely documented.