The Russian Defense Ministry, Russian propaganda media, and telegram channels are actively working to justify the situation in Bucha, where at least 400 murdered and tortured residents were found after Russian troops left. Russian propaganda does not have a unified approach for this case, so it spreads completely different messaging and manipulative messages, from versions about staging and fake photos to the version allegedly killed by the Ukrainian military "for the picture" for foreign media. "The Media Detector recorded 18 variations of propaganda messages. Not all of them are related, but all of them are aimed at justifying Russia.

The most popular message promoted by the Russian authorities is a "staging" or "provocation" by the Ukrainian authorities to force the West to give weapons and aircraft, discredit the Russian army, disrupt peace agreements, and incite violence.

Along with this message spread allegedly:

- "not a single civilian was harmed while Russian troops were in town";

- "residents of Bucha were able to leave the city while Russian troops were there";

- "photos of the dead in Bucha were shown only on the fourth day after the Russian troops left";

- "the video from Bucha shows the dead moving their arms and removing their limbs in order to avoid being hit by the wheels of military equipment, and getting up".

Another group of messages is based on a technique that Russia has already tried - shifting responsibility to the Ukrainian defenders. Among other things, they spread the theses that:

- "the residents of Bucha were killed by the local terrorists";

- "the residents of Bucha were killed by artillery fire from the AFU and Azov when they entered the city";

- "there are white bandages on the bodies of the dead - they were used by the Ukrainians";

- "tying hands is the handwriting of the Ukrainian military and terrorists".

Bucha had been under the occupation of the Russian army since the beginning of March, only on April 1 the AFU reported liberation of the city. After Bucha was returned under the control of the AFU, hundreds of dead were found there. These crimes by the Russian military are already referred to as the "Bucha massacre. President Vladimir Zelensky visited Bucha on April 4 and said that Russia committed war crimes and genocide in Ukraine. The European Union accused Russian authorities of committing atrocities.

"Detector Media" urges readers to take care of their mental health and try not to distribute the photos to their acquaintances and loved ones, because the purpose of such activities of the Russians is to terrorize the Ukrainian population. They seek to intimidate and break the spirit to make it harder for Ukrainians to resist.

This thesis is spread by the Russian media and pro-Kremlin telegram channels The Center to Counter Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine warned that another attempt by Russia to prepare an information field to justify war crimes and an attempt to intimidate the population against the background of redeployment of occupation troops to Donbass and the south of Ukraine. "A similar disinformation campaign in the Russian media was recorded on February 27 to spread panic among the population. The enemy reported alleged Ukrainian provocations with phosphorus in Gostomel. On March 25 and April 2, the Kafirs used phosphorus in ORDLO. Then the Kremlin media tried to shift responsibility for the use of banned weapons to the Ukrainian armed forces," the report said.

Russian propaganda spreads a fake map of uranium deposits on Ukrainian territory as if to prove that Ukraine "carried out nuclear developments to blow up European security. The Center for Counteracting Disinformation countered: "Our state has large deposits of various minerals. But their presence is not equal to the presence of weapons of mass destruction which the Kremlin misinforms the population about. The center specified that with such fakes, Russia is trying to prepare an information field to justify its crimes, and is also trying to split the EU and NATO.

This statement is circulated by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Gennady Gatilov, permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the UN office and international organizations in Geneva, said: "The documents confirm the fact that Germany is implementing its own military-biological program in Ukraine. Its purpose is to study the potential of deadly diseases, such as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, in Eastern Europe. Russia has long been misinformed that Ukraine is developing biological weapons. In reality, it is impossible to create "ethnic weapons. First of all, there are no biological (or any other) weapons in the world that affect only a certain ethnic group - science and technology have not advanced that far, and scientists do not expect breakthroughs in this direction in the near future. And no weapon or disease will be able to distinguish the DNA of the Ukrainians from that of the Russians, because the differences, although present, are insignificant: the Europeans are genetically homogeneous and among them there are about four subgroups, which may include representatives of completely different ethnicities (for example, the Baltic peoples, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Poles are included in one subgroup). Read more about how Russia misinforms Ukrainians and the world about biological weapons in Gala Sklyarevska's article "How Ukraine (according to Russia) is "preparing biological weapons" from fleas, mosquitoes and lizards.

This assertion is promoted by Russian propaganda media and pro-Russian TV channels. Such reports state that the so-called crisis in Ukraine came about because of U.S. and NATO policies, which allegedly "pumped weapons into Ukraine" in circumvention of agreements and laws. In reality, there is no crisis in Ukraine, as Russian propagandists call it, but a full-fledged war in which military and civilians are being killed. It was Russia, not the United States or NATO, that unleashed the war in Ukraine. As ZMIST fact-checkers, who pointed out this message, wrote, this is how Russia tries to justify its war crimes. "Again we see the transfer of responsibility to others. It's not NATO and the U.S. that have stormed into Ukraine. It's not NATO and the US destroying Ukrainian cities. It's not NATO and the US killing Ukrainian men, women and children. This is all Russia's doing," the message reads.

This is the information disseminated by Russian propaganda media. The reports claim that the Ukrainian Motor Sich Concern is developing the new bayraktars. They add that such devices will spray viruses from the air. ""In fact, we are talking about the development by the Kiev regime of means of delivery of biological weapons with the possibility of use against Russia,"" the reports say.

However, this is not true. As Ukrainska Pravda writes, no documentary or visual evidence of such a request has been cited in Russian propaganda. However, the activity of the so-called biolaboratories Russian propaganda recently cited as another reason for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. You can read more about the so-called biolaboratories at the link."

Russia's Defense Ministry has spread a fake that the Ukrainian military allegedly uses as a shelter for a synagogue in Uman. Russian propagandists also spread a photo where the military allegedly took weapons and ammunition from the synagogue.

The United Jewish Community of Ukraine has refuted this fake, saying that all synagogues and Jewish sites in Ukraine are used exclusively for their intended purpose, to carry out religious activities, or to help members of Jewish communities and the local population. "Even based on a photo published for provocative purposes, it is evident that the synagogue gates are closed, and no one is in it. The Rabbi Nachman Foundation in Uman confirms that the second-largest synagogue in Ukraine was closed from Rosh Hashanah (celebrated in September 2021) and has not been used since," the statement said.

Information about this is spreading in pro-Russian telegram channels by re-posts from the channel of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green from Georgia.

According to ZMIST fact-checkers, the congresswoman accused Ukraine of torturing civilians and Nazism. In her tweets, she refers to a selection of videos in which Troy and ordinary people punish looters by tying them to poles and beating their asses. "The selection itself was presented by a propaganda account, which repeats Russian propaganda word for word and does not provide context for the video. Marjorie Taylor reiterates Russia's propaganda and demands an end to Ukraine's support. But it should be noted that Taylor has repeatedly made contradictory statements, publicly supported the most bizarre conspiracy theories, called for weapons to stop vaccinations against coronavirus - all to attack Democrats and President Biden, so do not trust her words," - said in a statement.

Such information is spread in the Russian propagandistic media. The propagandists conclude that Britain will help Ukraine with nuclear weapons on the basis of a short video teaser posted on a YouTube channel of Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus.

However, this is not true. According to StopFake, in the full version of the video, Ben Wallace, the British Minister of Defense, denied the possibility of providing such assistance. In response to questions from Russian pranksters, the British Defense Minister recalled the signing of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

This statement is being spread by Russian propagandists, mentioning that the U.S. president Joe Biden himself admitted that he was afraid of hypersonic Kinzhal missiles and allegedly stated that the U.S. military is not able to stop a hypersonic missile.

According to StopFake, all of this is not true, because Joe Biden said that the use of Kinzhal missiles is a sign that "Putin is pressed against the wall" due to the lack of success of the Russian army in Ukraine. He also stressed that these missiles are not fundamentally different from those already known, except that it is difficult to shoot them down by air defense systems.

Such a statement has been spread by the Russian propagandist media. In their messages, they accused Volodymyr Zelenskyi of lies, claiming that he lied in his speech to the Parliament of Israel saying that russian missiles hit Babyn Yar. According to StopFake, Russian propagandist media are using the testimony of an Israeli journalist who says that there is no damage on the territory of the memorial.

In fact, during the March 1 shelling of Kyiv, the Russian army fired on the Kyiv television tower, one missile hit the television center’s technical building, another one - the Avantgarde building on the grounds of the former Jewish cemetery. “The issue here is firing on the Babyn Yar memorial complex and not damaging a specific monument. According to the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, the Kharkiv synagogue, one of the largest in Europe has been fired on, the Jewish cemetery in Bila Tserkva and a number of other Jewish sites in Ukraine have been shelled”, StopFake writes.

ТSuch a statement has been spread by the russian propagandist media. In particular, Lenta.ru, Krasnaya Vesna, TASS, Vesti and many others. They claim that Germany allegedly will no longer supply weapons to Ukraine. According to StopFake, such “news” refer to the statement of German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht who allegedly announced on March 21 that “Germany is unlikely to send Ukraine any of the Bundeswehr’s reserves. I would even say that we can’t send anything.” However, what Minister Lambrecht actually said is quite the opposite, that the German federal government is considering further arms supplies to Ukraine. Russian media deliberately distorted Christine Lambrecht’s words.

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The Center for Combating Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine warned that Russia had spread a fake map of the occupiers advances in Ukraine, where almost half of the country's area was allegedly occupied or blocked by the Russian military. The Center denied this information and reminded that the enemy was losing both personnel and equipment—Russian lieutenant general Andrey Mordvichev was killed, several columns of equipment of the occupiers in Mykolayiv and Sumy regions were destroyed, 2 planes, 3 helicopters, 3 UAVs and 4 cruise missiles of the enemy were shot down.

The Center for Counteracting Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine denied this information and reminded of the importance of air raid alarms, as well as the fact that test sirens are prohibited under wartime conditions. The Center also denied similar fakes related to air raid alarms: "There are objects that are detected by air defense, but the air raid sirens are not being activated because of them—it's a fake. After all objects being detected, even if they are small, the siren rings out. People did not have time to hide because the duty officer did not turn on the air raid siren—it's a fake. The siren is activated by the duty officer of the control center, who is present on the spot around the clock."

Russia's Defense Ministry is spreading a fake message that the Security Service of Ukraine is allegedly "preparing a provocation with the use of toxic substances against civilians with the support of Western countries."

The SBU denied the report and noted that the fake spread after the occupiers fired on a peace column near Mariupol and dropped a bomb on the city's drama theatre building. « "Such statements by the invaders are just an attempt to divert attention from another war crime. But no fakes will cover the genocide of civilians and the humanitarian catastrophe in Mariupol, which is being destroyed by Russian missiles and bombs,"the SBU said.

Russia's Defense Ministry claims that "at least 180 foreign mercenaries were killed and a large consignment of foreign weapons" destroyed due to Russian missiles hitting military installations in the Lviv region on the morning of March 13. The report refers to the shelling of the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in the village of Starychi, Yavoriv district, Lviv region.

In a comment to CNN, Markiyan Lubkivskyi, a spokesman for Ukraine's Defense Ministry, denied the presence of foreigners in the centre at all and called the fake "untrue and purely Russian propaganda." According to the Lviv Regional Military Administration, and 134 were injured in the shelling of the Yavoriv test site, where the centre is located.

Pro-Russian telegram channels are spreading this thesis, criticizing the new law on ensuring civilians' participation in Ukraine's defence. Such reports argue that civilians can allegedly kill anyone if they believe that "the victim committed aggression against Ukraine." The same law stipulates that civilians may use weapons in the same way as the military ("the use of firearms by civilians is similar to the use of weapons by servicemen in carrying out their tasks to repel armed aggression against Ukraine").

In addition, the alleged "abolition" of the Criminal Code is a blatant lie. After all, other laws - №7116 and №7124 - increased criminal liability in Ukraine, namely for looting and treason or sabotage.

It's hard to believe, but Russia's Defense Ministry continues to report "findings" that seem to confirm the "development of biological weapons" in laboratories allegedly set up by the Pentagon in Ukraine. For example, on March 10, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had found evidence of "experiments with bat coronavirus", hinting that it was in Ukraine that they could create a covid. Earlier, the pro-Russian anonymous telegram channels and the Russian media wrote a lot about the fact that the COVID was created in Ukraine with the help of the Pentagon багато писали проросійські анонімні телеграм-канали та російські ЗМІ – the last wave of such fakes was at the end of 2020. But this time, the Russian Defense Ministry added more fantastic details. Now they have come up with a "project to study the transfer of pathogens of birds migrating between Ukraine and Russia," The Pentagon tried to create birds that would carry "African swine fever and anthrax" to Russia. Moreover, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, Foreign Minister Lavrov and propagandist Tina Kandilaki, all these viruses were "adapted to the Slavic ethnic group". For this purpose, biological samples collected in Ukraine were allegedly sent from Ukraine to the United States.

In general, the United States planned to use not only birds but also insects as weapons against the Russians: "Adaptation of viruses to the Slavic ethnic group in Ukrainian laboratories is the most terrible and dangerous threat to our country. There is no war worse: there is protection against a missile flying in our direction, but against a mosquito infected with polio or meningitis (no)… "- writes Kandilaki. Lavrov also announced today the creation of "ethnically oriented" biological weapons in Ukraine. However, Lavrov and the Russian Defence Ministry have not yet decided how mosquitoes will distinguish Slavic-Russians from Slavic-Ukrainians, and how migratory birds define Kandelaki's state borders.

It will be recalled that there have never been "American Pentagon bio laboratories" in Ukraine — this is a Russian fake, which has been circulating since 2010 and has been debunked many times. Only during the war in Ukraine was it denied by the Pentagon, the US State Department, EU representatives, the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.

This statement is spread in the Kremlin media with the emphasis that Ukraine is blackmailing the EU by cutting the transit of gas in order to obtain new arms supplies and air defense. According to StopFake, this is not true.

"Officially, representatives of the Ukrainian government say that any restrictions on gas supplies should be a part of a package of sanctions against Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine," the fact-checkers said.

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In particular, according to the Center for Combating Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, in Berdyansk, the occupiers are distributing leaflets, the main narrative of which is the need for Ukraine to join Russia. Furthermore, the text of such leaflets speaks of Russia's alleged struggle against Nazi groups, including the Azov Regiment. The statement reads that the enemy presents all this as an unalterable version of events," the statement reads.

Propagandists are also conducting propaganda radio broadcasts in Mariupol. "The enemy is threatening the city's population, noting that the only way to survive is to stop resisting, surrender weapons and leave the city through ''humanitarian corridors'' created by Russia. But the propaganda methods of their propaganda of the 1940s do not work for Ukrainians," the Center reports.

The telegram channels administered by the Russian services are widely spreading the message that Western countries will gradually abandon the sanctions imposed on Russia due to the attack on Ukraine. In particular, the Gossip Girl writes channel that while NATO "refuses to provide weapons and close the skies over Ukraine, the West does not even want to give EU candidate status. That's all you need to know about Europe's support!" There is a similar message about Great Britain.

There are no official grounds to say that Western countries refuse to help Ukraine and lift sanctions en masse. On the contrary, such a message is beneficial to propagandists to give the impression that "everything is gone" Ukraine was left without support in the fight against Russia.

Russian propagandists say that territorial defence detains, searches and inhumanely treats civilians for no reason. They give no evidence, but they keep repeating that the territorial defence consists of "criminals" with weapons.

Today in the Russian media, in particular in RIA Novosti, there was a fake that allegedly on the orders of Foreign Minister Viktor Lyashko in the "Pentagon laboratories in Ukraine" on February 24, the day Russia attacked Ukraine, destroyed the cultures of pathogens that they were stored. And that this "order" seems to be evidence of the development of components of biological weapons in Ukraine. Russian media also published photos of the documents - without the minister's signature and with many grammatical errors. There is no word in these "documents" about "secret experiments" or "biological weapons development", but only a list of pathogens stored in Ukrainian laboratories - as in other laboratories around the world - and claims that they were destroyed. The list of what was allegedly destroyed by "order of the Ministry of Health" includes anthrax, as well as diphtheria, candidiasis and common urinary tract infections. According to the DM, Minister Lyashko is now preparing to refute this fake.

UPDATED March 7: The Ministry of Health has denied reports of alleged "emergency cleanup of the US Department of Defense-funded military-biological program" and "destruction of particularly dangerous pathogens" at the Poltava and Kharkiv Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The fake about the existence of "US biological laboratories in Ukraine" was created in Russia during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych (2010 - 2014), and was actively spread in all countries of the former Soviet Union that joined the Nunn-Lugar program, under which the Pentagon allocated funds to modernize laboratories which working with various pathogens. Fakes about the creation of biological weapon in them were spread in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. At the same time, Russia was also a member of the same program until 2021. Covid and Viktor Medvedchuk (Ukrainian pro-Russian politician) gave a new life to the fake about the Pentagon's biological laboratories, claiming that it was through them that Ukrainians became ill with measles and that biological weapon being developed in them. Now the Russian Defense Ministry is spreading this fake again.

Manipulators involve the fact that Ukrainians are not evacuated from cities that are regularly under attack. Detector Media recorded such rhetoric on the fourth day of the war, but it is very dangerous to evacuate civilians in large numbers, both then and now, without green corridors.

The propagandists explain that Zelensky is deliberately making sacrifices among the civilians in order to maintain the image for the media and foreign partners. As if, that's how Ukraine is asking for weapons.

According to the Center for Combating Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, such fake is dispersed by enemy propaganda. “This lie has been spread in order to demoralize Ukrainians and break our powerful resistance to the Russian invasion! Now the world is more united than ever! We are given weapons, ammunition, planes, financial aid! And these are the real actions that everyone sees,” the Center says in a statement.