Russian propagandists are circulating images of what is purportedly the new cover of Titanic magazine for December 2024. It depicts the head of the Presidential Office, Andrii Yermak, who is supposedly a footstool for the newly elected US President Donald Trump. The cover also contains captions: “Ukrainian leadership will be very useful to the new US president” and “Trump will appoint everyone to the right positions”.

The VoxCheck project reports that this is a fake cover. It shows issue number 4352. In fact, Titanic released a magazine with a different cover under this issue in December. It depicts the candidate for German chancellor, leader of the Christian Democratic Union, Friedrich Merz, with his wife Charlotte.

After all, all the covers that Titanic has ever created can be viewed on the magazine’s social media pages or on the magazine’s website in the Archive section. The cover with Trump and Yermak is missing there — an additional indication that the Russians created it themselves.

Also at the top right of the fake cover is the inscription “Internet-Aufgabe”. Presumably, the authors of the fake article wanted to use the word “ausgabe” (issue) instead of “aufgabe” (task). This mistake was also present on previous fake covers.

Titanic is a German satirical magazine that is published monthly and publishes mostly political cover images.

During the full-scale war, we recorded at least six fake Titanic magazine covers created by propagandists. A detailed analysis of each fabricated cover can be found on our website by typing the word “Titanic” into the search engine.

Russian propaganda Telegram channels are spreading a video purportedly from the BBC, which claims that Bellingcat investigators have found that “the number of Ukrainian fakes has decreased threefold since mid-November 2024”. In turn, they cite the “lack of funds” for creating and posting content as the most likely reason for this.

However, this is a fake, writes the VoxCheck project. The BBC did not publish such a video either on its official website or on its social media pages. There is also no information about it on Bellingcat's official resources.

The video clip that propagandists are spreading does not contain any original footage. For the fake, they used materials from open sources that are not related to each other. For example, the photo with Volodymyr Zelenskyi was taken from the official website of the Office of the President of Ukraine - the photo was published back in July 2022. And the shot with the President of Ukraine and European leaders was taken during the European Council summit in Brussels on October 17, 2024.

We have previously analyzed fake videos allegedly created by the BBC, in particular, a fake about Zelenskyi's “personal endocrinologist” fleeing abroad.

Russian propagandists claim that over 99% of Ukrainians who left the occupied territories are returning due to their inability to settle in the territory controlled by Ukraine. The propagandists write that these figures were allegedly provided by Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov, citing People's Deputy Maksym Tkachenko.

However, this information is not true. This is reported by the VoxCheck project. First of all, on Yurii Butusov's pages on social networks there is no post with a link to the words of People's Deputy Maksym Tkachenko. However, on November 24, 2024, in an interview with Ukrinform, Tkachenko commented on the return of internally displaced persons. Then his words were quoted by the media outlet Censor.NET, where Butusov is the editor-in-chief.

In an interview, Tkachenko said:

“Already about 150 thousand internally displaced persons have returned to the temporarily occupied territories. For example, according to available data, 200 thousand Mariupol residents left their city, fleeing the war that Russia brought to our land. At the same time, every third of them returned home, to Mariupol, to the occupation. According to estimates, this is approximately 67-70 thousand people”.

He noted that people decided to leave because they did not receive proper assistance from the state: housing, social support, compensation, and work.

However, the day after the interview was published, Tkachenko denied his statement:

“There is no such data. It was my unfounded and emotional assumption”.

He clarified that there are individual cases when Ukrainians go to the regions occupied by Russia for various reasons. However, we are not talking about hundreds or even tens of thousands, because “general verified statistics cannot even theoretically exist”.

It is worth noting that in this interview the MP did not mention 99% of internally displaced persons who allegedly returned to the occupation. Presumably, the creators of this fake twisted the words of the former Deputy Minister for Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons, Heorhii Tuka. On November 24, 2024, on the air of Espresso, he commented on the departure of Ukrainians to uncontrolled territories:

“I have been observing the process of refugees returning to the temporarily occupied territories since 2015, when I headed the Luhansk Military Administration and then worked in the ministry. I have repeatedly communicated with people and I do not even have any hints of condemning these people. I do not know a single person who would return to the TOT of their own free will. 99% of people return because they were unable to establish a normal life in the territories controlled by Ukraine”.

Later, the editorial staff of Espresso corrected the headline. It was like this:  “Almost 99% of refugees are returning to the occupied territories because they could not establish a normal life in the controlled part of Ukraine, former Deputy Minister for TOT Tuka”, and now - “almost 99% of refugees with whom I spoke are returning to the occupied territories because they could not establish a normal life in the controlled part of Ukraine, Tuka”.

After all, it was only about the people the former employee communicated with, not 99% of internally displaced persons throughout Ukraine. That is, this is his personal assessment, not a calculation based on real statistics.

Previously, we analyzed Russian manipulation, saying that 77% of Ukrainians are ready to give up the occupied territories.

Pro-Russian resources are spreading information that the hosts of the American television channel CNN are allegedly laughing at the news about ten thousand Ukrainian refugees who were evicted from social housing in France.

In fact, this is a fake, the VoxCheck project reports. The video that the propagandists are referring to was published back in November 2020. And in it, journalists from not CNN, but LOCAL 12 from the American city of Cincinnati, Ohio, talked about a Christmas tree that was installed in the city center.

There is no “news” about the eviction of 10,000 Ukrainian refugees from social housing in France on CNN, or on media pages on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Only pro-Russian sources write about it.

While there may indeed be problems at the local level, they are not on the scale that propagandists claim. For example, in October of this year, there was news that in one region of France, Ukrainian refugees were being asked to move out of the housing they had been provided due to budget cuts. However, at that time, we were talking about 600 Ukrainians, not ten thousand.

Previously, we analyzed the manipulation that Ukrainians allegedly became the leaders of “migrant crime” in Germany.

Russian propaganda sources are spreading information that George Soros, an American businessman and philanthropist, has allegedly undergone a heart transplant. The donor is said to have been a Ukrainian soldier who died in the war.

In fact, this is another Russian fake, the VoxCheck project writes. No reputable and reliable media have reported on any operation by the 94-year-old Soros, let alone a heart transplant from a deceased Ukrainian soldier. In addition, there is no evidence in open sources of illegal organ harvesting from Ukrainian soldiers. Soldiers, like others, can consent to posthumous donation. However, according to Ukrainian law, in the event of their death in battle, harvesting organs, even despite their consent during their lifetime, is strictly prohibited.

Apparently, Russian propagandists invented this “news” to discredit Soros, who supports Ukraine - his Open Society Foundation alone, as of November 2023, provided Ukraine with over $230 million in support in the form of grants.

Soros has also repeatedly criticized the Russians. For example, he claimed that a victory for Ukraine would be the end of Russia and then it would no longer pose a threat to the rest of the world. In turn, Soros's funds were banned in Russia back in 2015.

Today, pro-Kremlin resources continue to wage a discrediting campaign against the businessman. In particular, in 2023, they spread rumors about the alleged death of Soros, who denied this on social networks the same day. And propagandists also spread conspiracy theories about Soros, saying that he is connected to “reptilians”, is the “owner” of Ukraine, “secretly rules the world”, and others.