The Internet is spreading alleged words of the head of the Union of Consumers of Public Utilities Oleh Popenko that the cost of electricity for the population in 2025 will be 6.5-7 UAH kWh. He stated that these figures have already been voiced by representatives of the electricity supplier company YASNO, DTEK and deputy Serhii  Nahorniak.

However, the Cabinet of Ministers, YASNO DTEK and Nahorniak did not announce an increase in the electricity tariff in 2025 to 6.5-7 UAH kWh. The current tariff of 4.32 UAH kWh will be valid until May 2025. Let us recall that according to Ukrainian legislation, electricity tariffs are set by the Cabinet of Ministers. .

At the beginning of summer, the government raised electricity tariffs for Ukrainians. Against this background, the thesis is spreading on social networks that life in Ukraine is “unbearable” — prices for utilities, including electricity, are “sky-high” and even incomparable with European prices.

Although experts from the analytical center Dixi Group analyzed the thesis and found out that the authors of such disinformation materials take information about prices from different sources without understanding how comparable such information is. One source may indicate prices based on taxes, another - without. One source contains information about wholesale prices for electricity (i.e. without taking into account tariffs for transportation and taxes), and another - about retail (where all these components are already included).

In fact, the explainer differentiated all the indicators that accompany the time when electricity “reaches” the buildings of Europeans - the price of goods, transportation tariffs, supplier markup, taxes - and it was possible to find out that Ukraine has the lowest price for electricity among the European countries considered. This is largely due to government regulation.

Other countries - Italy, the UK, France and Germany - have higher prices, partly due to significant investment needs in clean energy and new electricity grids.

By spreading such a message, propagandists want to feed the narrative that Ukraine is allegedly uninhabitable due to the lack of electricity or high prices for utilities. In this way, the authors want to sow panic among Ukrainians in order to destabilize the mood and create a feeling that “nothing will change”. Also, by calling the so-called collapse revenge for the Crimean Bridge, Russians once again seek to shift responsibility for what is happening to Ukraine. They say that Russia is destroying infrastructure solely because of Ukraine’s aggression. However, it is Russia that is the aggressor, and it is this country that started the war.

Information is being spread on Russian social networks that a private clinic has posted ads looking for a doctor and a driver-courier to work in frontline cities. Anonymous users report that these vacancies are likely related to the removal of organs from the front or semi-legal cooperation between Ukrainian military personnel and private clinics.

But this is a fake. The ads contain numerous inaccuracies, the phone number belongs to another person. Using keywords, our fact-checking colleagues found the vacancies shown in the screenshots, all of them were published by a user named Viktor Glushko. The ad from the first screenshot was removed from the SellBuyAll.com.ua website, but Glushko published a vacancy for an anesthesiologist-resuscitator on the same website. It is noteworthy that an ad with identical content on the same website was published by an account with the nickname _anо.ni.m. The vacancies were posted on other local websites with ads.

There are inaccuracies in the text of the advertisements themselves. In particular, it is stated that the applicant for the vacancy of a surgeon must have mastered “transplantation methods”. However, fact-checkers were unable to find a definition of “transplantation methods”.

The list of duties of a “driver-courier” includes the item “delivery of biomaterials in Ukraine and abroad by automobile and motorcycle transport”. However, firstly, travel outside of Ukraine is prohibited for most military-liable men, although, of course, there are exceptions.

“Black transplantology” in Ukraine is a conspiracy theory that Russians have been developing for a decade. The constant return to the topic testifies to its importance for Russia. These messages are promoted to both domestic and international audiences. However, their refutation in foreign and Ukrainian media prevents the campaign from having the desired effect. Among the goals pursued by Russian propaganda within the framework of this topic are discrediting the military-political leadership of Ukraine and reducing trust in it, creating a negative image of the state in the eyes of the international community, and justifying a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Read also: How and why Russia uses the topic of “black transplantology” in Ukraine

Russian Telegram channels are distributing photos and videos that allegedly show buildings in Kyiv using laser projections to greet the Russian dictator on his birthday.

But this is a fake, because the photo and video content are fabricated and do not correspond to reality. In fact, there were no greetings on the buildings, and the Russians made grammatical errors when generating the video content.

The video of the Arena City building indicates the date - October 7, 2024 and the time - 00:01. At the same time, voices of people and the movement of cars are heard behind the scenes, which raises doubts about the veracity of this video. Since the introduction of martial law in Ukraine, a curfew has been in effect, prohibiting people from being on the streets, in particular, in Kyiv from 00:00 to 05:00. So the presence of an active city life at the present time does not correspond to Ukrainian realities and may indicate that the video is falsified.

Moreover, on another recording, one can see an identical greeting at the Ukraine Hotel. However, when asked by our fact-checking colleagues, the hotel responded that they did not make such a greeting. And there are also no mentions of the Russian dictator's birthday on the hotel's social media pages or on its website.

We have documented fakes many times, whether they involve fake graffiti, foreign magazine covers/newspaper columns, or advertising videos. In this way, propagandists aim to show that their rhetoric (for example, that Zelenskyi is hated by the whole world) is also repeated in the West. This may make readers think that the public is really unhappy with Ukraine. And especially when the authors use elements of popular culture, implying that people are laughing at the situation in Ukraine and that the Ukrainian agenda is a reason for Europe to laugh.

A story allegedly from the national daily newspaper USA Today is being spread on Russian social networks, which states that an American food blogger was blocked on a streaming platform “for preparing Russian dishes”.

“A girl with 1.2 million subscribers was left without a channel and income because she dedicated an episode to making dumplings, borshch, and told how she had a great trip to Russia and got acquainted with Russian cuisine”, the propagandists say.

But there was no such story on the pages of USA Today. Moreover, using a reverse Google search and the query “YouTube blocked a blogger for a video about cooking a Russian dish”, the search engine only shows publications from pro-Kremlin media that translate their materials into English. That is, it is most likely that such news is simply made up.

And in fact, a conditional video or channel could be blocked if it violated YouTube community rules. Definitely, a channel could not be deleted because of a “video about a Russian dish”.

Thus, propagandists promote a narrative about the existence of so-called Russophobia, which Moscow fights against and protects its citizens. The Kremlin media puts the meaning of another term into the word Russophobia, namely xenophobia — a sharp rejection of another culture, language, and way of life that can manifest itself in the political life of a state through discrimination based on national and cultural grounds. The meaning of this word, in a much narrower sense, is hidden behind the term Russophobia, according to Russian propaganda. Russia also justifies its attack on Ukraine with so-called Russophobia.

Russia presents Russophobia as a separate type of Nazism that originated in Ukraine and is spreading en masse around the world. Anyone who criticizes Russia is a Russophobe, and therefore a Nazi. At first, the disinformation message about Russophobia was aimed mainly at the Ukrainian audience, but after the world community supported Ukraine in the war, it spread to European countries. It even went as far as accusing Israel of Nazism.

Experts at the Center for Countering Disinformation monitor the media in the Global South for narratives that are beneficial to Russia. They have identified several of these.

On the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israeli territory, some Middle Eastern media wrote about the double standards of the West regarding the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. It was noted that “violations of international humanitarian law are condemned in the context of Russian aggression against Ukraine, but are not condemned in the case of Israel”.

In addition, some Middle Eastern media outlets actively disseminated statements by Russian officials that “the current confrontation between Russia and the West is unprecedented” and that the United States is “paving the way to a nuclear conflict”. 

As a reminder, the term Global South refers to countries that the World Bank considers to be low- and middle-income countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. All countries with a per capita GDP of over $15,000 are considered part of the Global North, except for Bulgaria and Romania, which are members of the European Union. By this definition, both Russia and Ukraine are in the Global South, as are China and India. Some geographically southern countries, such as Chile and Uruguay, are classified as part of the Global North based on their per capita GDP.

The Global South is not homogeneous. Attitudes toward Russia’s aggression vary greatly in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Some experts argue that the Global South has generally taken a neutral stance toward Russia’s war against Ukraine. Turkey, for example, is trying to mediate Russia’s war against Ukraine by facilitating a grain deal and participating in a prisoner exchange. Brazil is proposing its own “peace plan” to resolve Russia’s war against Ukraine. And China and South Africa are conducting joint naval exercises with Russia. Recent opinion polls in China, Turkey, and India show that residents of these countries clearly want the war to end as soon as possible, even if that means Ukraine has to make territorial concessions.

A video of Ukrainian servicemen packing up their belongings is being circulated in the Russian segment of social networks. Propagandists claim that the video is allegedly evidence of “looting” by Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region.

“The villagers are robbing the Kursk region. The Nazis cannot do otherwise”, users comment.

But using image search tools, StopFake fact-checkers discovered that the video of soldiers packing their belongings was published on September 15 on the channel of a Ukrainian serviceman from the 58th separate motorized infantry brigade.

Also in the description of the video the location is indicated - Donbas. From the following videos on this channel one can see that the military is moving to another place.

Russian propaganda accuses Ukrainian troops of looting for many reasons - both to discredit the image of the Ukrainian armed forces and to distract attention from the problems with looting among Russian soldiers, which have repeatedly proven themselves guilty.