Spilnota Detector Media
Detector Media collects and documents real-time chronicles of the Kremlin disinformation about the Russian invasion. Ukraine for decades has been suffering from Kremlin disinformation. Here we document all narratives, messages, and tactics, which Russia is using from February 17th, 2022. Reminder: the increasing of shelling and fighting by militants happened on the 17th of February 2022 on the territory of Ukraine. Russian propaganda blames Ukraine for these actions.

On 10 October, on the 959th day of the full-scale war, our editorial office recorded:

2447
Fake
739
Manipulation
720
Message
523
Disclosure
Русскій фейк, іді на***!

Fake In France, a 20-meter Ukrainian flag was allegedly splashed during a rally

Photos of women holding a large blue and yellow flag are being shared online. The publications add that the photo was taken during a rally of the “Marseille-Odesa” organization on the steps of the Saint-Charles train station in Marseille (France).

Propagandists stressed that the action allegedly outraged local residents, who began to trample and wave the Ukrainian flag. “Apparently, the French are already very fed up with the Ukrainians, if they are ready to do this with the “state” flag”, the propagandists comment. However, this is not true.

The VoxCheck analysts note that there is no information about a similar incident during the campaign. The “outraged” French could simply be invented by propagandists.

After all, on the official page of the “Marseille-Odesa” organization on Facebook, you can find the corresponding photo, which is used by fakers in their publications. In her caption, the head of the union Nataliia Dobrianska reports on the action and notes that Odesans like the stairs to the Saint-Charles station because they remind them of the Potemkin stairs in Odesa. However, neither the caption to the photo nor the comments to the post contain any mention of the flag-lowering incident.

Moreover, neither the Ukrainian nor the French media have any information about such incidents during the action.

Newspeak How Russia blurs reality with the help of newspeak: “military correspondents”

“Voienkor” (short for “war correspondents”) are propagandists who pretend to be journalists. Although they work in a combat zone, in fact the so-called “military correspondents” are full-time employees of Russian military information units serving aggression.

In modern Russia, the concept of “military correspondent” began to come into everyday use in 2014, when the Russian-Ukrainian war began. Then many patriotic Russians began to cover the events taking place in Donbas. With the start of a full-scale war in 2022, “military correspondents” became a phenomenon, and the term itself became entrenched in the Russian-language segment of the Internet. During the first months of a full-scale war, Russian “military correspondents” gained great popularity, since the Russian audience needed alternative sources of information about the progress of the war, other than the official ones. And above all on telegram as a convenient platform.

In fact, “military correspondents” have become such a significant and widespread phenomenon that the Russian State Duma even proposed equating “war correspondents” covering the war with combat veterans. In addition, some Russian military officers were awarded medals supposedly for their dangerous work in the combat zone.

Despite their feigned criticism, the “military correspondents” always remain in line with the key Kremlin narratives. When necessary, they extinguish indignation and panic. When necessary, on the contrary, they raise the temperature to the required level, looking for the culprits among military commissars, commanders or governors. The main thing is that Putin is never among the culprits of the problems that military correspondents write about. He’s good, it’s just that everyone deceives him and doesn’t tell him the whole truth.

Most military correspondents, after the flight of the Russian army from the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions, sharply shifted their focus to events in other regions where the Russians had at least some success. “Kyiv was not and could not be the main direction”, “Regrouping is a military necessity, often contrary to political expediency”, “the main thing is the South, where there is grain and access to the Black Sea - Odesa, Mykolaiv”. This was followed by hundreds of messages that convinced that the civilians killed in the Kyiv region were a “staged act”. One of the popular Russian “military correspondents”, Kots, positioned himself as an “eyewitness” who did not see the bodies of the dead.

And a similar principle followed whenever the authorities needed the help of “military correspondents” to divert attention or reduce the level of public disappointment due to bad news from the battlefield. For example, while Zmiinyi Island was in Russian hands, it was a “strategic object” that gave Russia control over almost the entire Black Sea. However, when the Russians were kicked out of there, the “military correspondents” at first did not write anything, but about a week later they began to talk about Zmiinyi as “a territory that is important only with complete control over Odesa and Mykolaiv”. And the Ukrainian banner on the island was called a “PR campaign”.

Fake Ukrainian soldiers allegedly beat a NATO instructor because he “didn't want” to speak Ukrainian

Anonymous Telegram channels spread information that the Ukrainian military beat a NATO instructor for refusing to speak Ukrainian. The incident happened in Denmark during pilot training. This is a lie.

The VoxCheck analysts took up this case and found out that it was a fictional news story published on a satirical channel.

Neither Ukrainian nor foreign media wrote about such an event. The primary source of the fabricated news is the satirical telegram channel “Empire of the Very Evil”. The description of the channel states: “Caution, possible fake and harsh satire. All written is fiction, all coincidences are accidental”.

Fake Dmytro Kuleba allegedly stated that the International Space Station is a legitimate military target for Ukraine

The so-called statement of Dmytro Kuleba is spreading on social networks, allegedly, Ukraine considers the International Space Station (ISS) a legitimate military target, since a Russian cosmonaut is on it. This is a lie.

The VoxCheck analysts wrote that such news was fabricated and published it on a satirical channel. And the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry did not make such statements. Also, Ukrainian diplomats did not give similar comments to the media.

Fake EU countries show cartoon about “Ukrainian piglets”

On social networks, a video is being shared where Ukrainians are “asking for asylum” in the member states of the European Union and NATO, while all three participants are represented as pigs. According to the plot, the USA turns out to be a butcher who profited from the plight of piglets. “What cool cartoons are in the EU!”, propagandists comment. It is not true.

The VoxCheck analysts investigated the case and established that the so-called cartoon is a fake video. After all, in fact, this is an animation of a fairy tale, on which propagandists imposed a textual accompaniment.

A keyword search on YouTube revealed that the animation was created back in 2020 by a user with the nickname Frame Order. The author creates entertaining animations based on famous films and fairy tales using dark humor.

In the original video, there are no inscriptions about Ukraine, NATO, the EU, unlike the propaganda “cartoon”.

Fake In Ukraine, users are allegedly asked to confirm their age on Telegram

Anonymous Telegram channels write that the “Ukrainian authorities” allegedly require the owners of Telegram channels to confirm their age in order to log into the account. The publication says that without such verification, it will be impossible to log into the user's account. This is a lie.

The VoxCheck analysts processed this case and came to the conclusion that such information does not correspond to reality - on Telegram, one does not need to confirm their age to log into the account. This is a part of “clickbait” advertising, where, allegedly under the pretext of a change in the use of Telegram, users are offered to click on a link “to learn more”.

For example, experts recorded this advertisement in the “Kyiv Dvizh” telegram channel and in a number of others. And the User clicks the button and follows the link to the Telegram channel that ordered the advertisement.

Orest Slyvenko, Artur Koldomasov, Vitalii Mykhailiv, Oleksandra Kotenko, Oleksandr Siedin, Kostiantyn Zadyraka, and Oleksiy Pivtorak are collaborating on this chronicle. Lesia Bidochko serves as the project coordinator, while Ksenia Ilyuk is the author of the project.