Kremlin-controlled media and propaganda outlets are once again attempting to destabilize the situation in Ukraine by spreading false claims about an alleged threat to overthrow the government. As reported by the fact-checking project StopFake, Robert Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, did not threaten President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Russian sources, including the propaganda project Drugaya Ukraina, claim that Robert “Madyar” Brovdi threatened to “turn the army against” Volodymyr Zelenskyy. According to these sources, he allegedly made the statement while commenting on discussions surrounding the current draft peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. As supposed evidence, they circulated a video clip featuring Brovdi’s remarks.

StopFake established that the video being shared online is actually an edited fragment from a livestream on Madyar’s YouTube channel, originally published on 2 September 2022.

Brovdi’s remarks were made in the context of discussing the theoretical possibility of negotiations with Russia at a time when, in his view, the war had reached a “turning point” in favor of the Ukrainian army. Shortly thereafter, Ukraine launched its successful counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region and liberated Kherson.

In the clip, Madyar warned “everyone” against entering into negotiations that would not serve the interests of the Ukrainian people:

“…By the New Year, the nature of the war will change. We will consolidate the turning point that is happening right now. In any case, those devils (Russia – ed.) will be forced to talk to us, and we are most likely not ready to talk. And if the authorities intend to negotiate against the interests of the Ukrainian people, they will get a blow to the head from us…”

The video therefore has no connection either to current peace initiatives or to any specific politicians.

By spreading the fake, propagandists deliberately omitted Brovdi’s full statement. Just a few seconds after the quoted passage, he explicitly clarified that he was not referring to any “specific individuals”. In this way, the agitprop apparatus used an outdated statement taken out of context to fabricate a story about an alleged internal conflict and to create the impression of political instability in Ukraine.

The Polish fact-checking community Demagog, together with the Institute of Media Monitoring (IMM), has published its ninth report on the scale of anti-Ukrainian propaganda and disinformation in the Polish-language segment of the internet. Covering the period from August to November 2025, the report recorded a significant increase in negative content, coinciding with Russia’s broader destabilization objectives.

According to the analysis by Demagog and IMM, 185,766 posts containing negative content and derogatory references to Ukraine and Ukrainians were published on X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube during the four-month period from August to November 2025.

This represents an increase of nearly 98% compared with the previous reporting period (April-July 2025).

IMM estimates that social media users may have been exposed to this harmful content 66.4 million times, marking a 104% increase.

The overwhelming majority of anti-Ukrainian posts (92.5% of all analyzed content and 60.8% of total reach) originated on the X platform.

Among the social media users publishing hostile content about Ukrainians were accounts belonging to politicians, including Janusz Korwin-Mikke, Grzegorz Braun, Włodzimierz Skalik, Konrad Berkowicz, as well as the political parties KORWiN and Confederation of the Polish Crown.

The largest spikes in negative content were recorded following:

Fact-checkers note that, regardless of the individual intentions of particular authors, their actions “align with Russia’s objectives,” namely the effort to cut Ukraine off from Western support.

The most common themes and techniques used by propagandists and politicians include:

This week and last week, fact-checkers have published a series of debunks exposing fake stories about alleged crimes committed by Ukrainian servicemen against civilians. In all cases, hostile sources used real news reports about criminal incidents, altering the headlines and adding references to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Here are three recent examples uncovered by VoxCheck:

A week earlier, propagandists also falsified a report from a Sumy media outlet, claiming that a serviceman had thrown a child out of a window.

In every case, propagandists inserted references to military personnel into reports about genuine criminal incidents, even though neither the original sources nor local media reports mentioned any involvement of servicemen.

To avoid becoming an unwitting distributor of hostile disinformation, it is important to watch for the following warning signs: