A fake news story with a link to a Euronews video appeared on a number of pro-Russian platforms, claiming that Ukrainians in Europe are illegally connecting to power grids in order to get (earn) cryptocurrency. According to the claim, these activities were motivated by the rising value of Bitcoin. The report alleges that over 400 Ukrainians were arrested last month alone and that their actions even caused energy shortages across the continent.

However, this is fake news: the video with such content was not published on the official Euronews website or its social media platforms. Many other details betray the falsity of this story: in particular, it is suspicious that this report did not even name the country where these attackers allegedly operated, but used the abstract wording “Europe”. Moreover, an online search for news about similar incidents did not yield any results either.

This fake news is part of a broader propaganda effort aimed at portraying Ukrainian refugees as criminals or terrorists, both a cultural and economic threat to European society, attempting to reduce support for Ukraine. As noted in our prior findings, Russian propaganda has consistently sought to discredit Ukrainian refugees since the start of the large-scale war in Ukraine.

Propagandists regularly spread fakes about them—they call refugees dependents, claim that these Ukrainians went abroad not for safety, but for profit, that they spread various diseases, and so on. Propagandists find these means necessary to perpetuate the idea that Ukrainians are bad people who do not appreciate the help that residents of other countries provide them and that they take advantage of the kindness of people from other countries.

For example, we recently reported that people online spread a fake story allegedly from the French publication Le Figaro, which talked about a Ukrainian refugee accused of murder.