Another historical fake used by Russian propaganda is the myth that Ukrainians never lived in the Black Sea region. It is part of the great myth about "originally Russian lands," which Russia allegedly went to "return to itself," restoring "historical justice."

As the history of the last 30 years shows, Russia started wars everywhere without using historical myths - for example, in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Syria. Propaganda did not need an explanation about "Russian peace" or "liberation of suffering peoples" from the "Nazis." But to explain the invasion of Ukraine since 2014, propaganda uses all sorts of fakes to prove its own "right" to kill Ukrainians. Sometimes they are directly opposite. In some cases, propaganda proves that Ukrainians do not exist at all; in others - they exist but "did not live" in certain territories and therefore do not have the right to them.

One of these fakes - that Ukrainians never lived in Odesa - was analyzed in detail by StopFake.

Images with data on the national composition of Odesa in 1894 are being distributed on social networks. According to these data, Russians, Jews, Poles, Germans, Greeks, and French lived in Odesa then. As the publication writes, the data indicated in the picture are more or less comparable with the data of the Odesa population census of 1892. His results were published two years later, in 1894. At that time, 336,000 people lived in Odesa. But, as the researchers explain, the population distribution took place according to many parameters, such as native language, religion, and whether the resident was: a Russian citizen or a foreigner. At the same time, people were not asked about their nationality; however, later census, held in 1897, there were statistics by nationality - and in the Kherson province, which included Odesa, 1,462,039 Ukrainians lived, which was 53.5% of the population of the region.

Here, read more about population censuses and historical data about Ukrainians in Odesa and Kherson regions.