Anonymous telegram channels insinuate the view that Ukraine is losing, fitting it into old anti-Western narratives and conspiracy theories. Propagandists write that Ukraine "abruptly started fighting for the Donbass," even though Ukrainian troops have been fighting for the country's integrity since 2014 uninterruptedly. In addition, Ukraine is moving toward the EU, and the "collective action," which anonymous telegram channels scare, returns its embassies to Kyiv, allocates millions in aid to Ukraine, and joins investigations into war crimes in Ukraine.

Anonymous telegram channels disseminate theses about the alleged desire of large and self-sufficient communities to be as independent as possible, about the flourishing of separatism in Ukraine, as well as about the "hand of the Kremlin" and the great role of decentralization reform in this. The message is manipulative because "the flourishing of separatism" is not supported by any fact. According to a sociological study by the Razumkov Center on the 30th anniversary of Ukrainian independence, only 11% of citizens primarily associate themselves with the region in which they live, 19% with the locality, and 59% with Ukraine as a whole. The same study showed that 8% said that Ukrainians do not have anything in common.

Andrei Isayev, a State Duma deputy from the United Russia party, said that Ukraine will have problems with the supply of food for the population, "the sowing season has failed, the roads are destroyed," "the Kiev regime will not solve this problem, and the West does not care about the fate of ordinary Ukrainians." Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine Mykola Solskyi said in an interview to "Ekonomichna Pravda" that Ukraine does not have and will not have any problem with food in the near future. We have reserves of basic products for several years, particularly oil - for many years. Sowing of spring crops continues in 23 regions of Ukraine, except Lugansk. As of April 14, the estimated sowing area of main spring crops for the harvest of 2022 on the territory controlled by Ukraine is 14 013 thousand ha, which is by 2 903.3 thousand hectares less than last year (16 916.3 thousand ha).

Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Taras Vysotskyi said that there will be no shortage of basic foods, particularly eggs, poultry, milk and vegetables in the domestic market of Ukraine. There is no shortage of food in stores, except in cities that the Russians have blockaded or temporarily occupied. No humanitarian aid can be delivered there.

In addition, the World Food Program has already rolled out a large-scale humanitarian assistance to war-affected Ukrainians. So, in particular, contacts have been established with bakeries, flour mills and food industry enterprises in Ukraine to purchase goods in critical regions. We are talking about 40 thousand tons of food products. Seven warehouses were opened in Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Chernivtsi, Odessa and Kropyvnytsky. And in Lviv, Vinnytsia and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts, cash assistance is provided to resettlers.

For two days, on April 14 and 15, after the news of the damage to the flagship Moskva surfaced, Russian media and government officials persistently promoted the message that the ship was okay. And if it was not, the reason was an accident. First there were reports that a shell had detonated on the ship, but the fire was localized, the ship was afloat, and the crew had been evacuated. The cause was said to be an accidental explosion or even smoking by the crew. On the evening of April 14, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that the ship sank - but this was due to a storm during towing, although it was previously reported that the damage to the cruiser was minor.

Today, the Russian media, quoting State Duma deputy Zatulin, already reported that an unknown number of the crew "went with the ship," possibly including the captain of the Moskva among them.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military immediately reported that the cruiser was hit by a Ukrainian Neptun missile. The Pentagon found it difficult to say why the cruiser died, but said that other ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet had withdrawn at a distance from the Ukrainian coast. The Washington Post also confirmed today, citing a Pentagon official, that the ship had been hit by an anti-ship missile.

Despite the fact that Russia has not officially acknowledged that the Moskva was let down by the Ukrainian military, Russian telegram channels are spreading messages en masse about the "cruiser's death during the battle" and promising "revenge for the cruiser." Why it is necessary to take revenge for the ship, I on which someone had an unfortunate smoke, the messages do not explain. The reports also promote the thesis that the ship was not hit by a Ukrainian-made missile, but was hit by an unknown foreign-made NATO missile. Thus, the Russian media and propagandists, Alexander Kots among them, are spreading the narrative "Russia is not at war with Ukraine, but against NATO.

The Center for Strategic Communications of the ICMP reports that by constantly changing messages, Russian propaganda is trying to reduce the psychological effect of the defeat of the cruiser.

This assertion is being actively circulated in pro-Russian telegram channels. They say that large agricultural companies are reducing their production and closing down, and that the cultivation of new food products may not take place because of the war. In fact, according to official data voiced by Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, even under war conditions, sowing has begun in all but one region of the country. "In Ukraine in all regions except Luhansk, the sowing campaign has begun. We are helping the agrarians, who have already provided them with 3.5 billion UAH in subsidized funding. At today's meeting we decided to simplify the registration of agricultural machinery as much as possible", - Shmyhal said. Given this, it is too early to talk about the decline of the agricultural sector in Ukraine. Talking about it is beneficial to the enemy, because this will give the impression that one of the major industries that brought profit to the country has suffered critically, and accordingly - Ukraine will suffer a powerful financial loss.

This was the thesis recently circulated by pro-Russian telegram channels. The messages said that "attitudes toward Ukrainians have already turned cold everywhere. They say that the attitude towards refugees from Ukraine will now significantly worsen, as well as the amount of support they receive. "Three to four more months and the situation will become even worse towards Ukrainians," the reports say. However, their authors do not specify the bad attitude in which countries they are talking about and draw their conclusions referring to some anonymous sources. The reports also add that it is now very difficult for Ukrainians to find work in the West, although there are seasonal jobs in the agricultural sector, but there are "hellish conditions" and low pay. In fact, such information is spread in order to discredit countries that are allies of Ukraine and to devalue their assistance to Ukrainian refugees. In fact, in many EU countries Ukrainians can receive state aid as refugees. Moreover, Ukrainians are also helped by residents of those countries. As a reminder, during the month, Russian propaganda had already spread several fakes about "bad refugees" from Ukraine, which were refuted.

After pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk was detained, anonymous telegram channels controlled by the Russian special services launched a series of manipulative messages designed to undermine Ukrainians' trust in the authorities. For the most part, these messages and theories are built on assumptions, such as "Medvedchuk is wearing a new uniform, which means that his things are not suitable for photographing. In fact, the new uniforms can't prove that Medvedchuk's things are "unsuitable for photographing. Moreover, there is no evidence that he was dressed up on purpose. Earlier, Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that Medvedchuk tried to disguise himself as a Ukrainian military man by wearing a uniform and crossing the Ukrainian border. It is noteworthy that the telegram channels avoid affirmative sentences and build messages on assumptions: "Zelenskyy knew about the start time of the attack on February 24, so the SBU could calmly take Medvedchuk to a safe place."

In addition, the telegram channels use the prefix "gossip" for their manipulations, after which one can write anything and retract his words if necessary. For example, "weaved in that the Russians knew that Medvedchuk was in the SBU, and negotiations on his exchange were unsuccessful. If Russia really did not plan to exchange Putin's cousin for Ukrainian defenders, it would mean that the Kremlin is not interested in Medvedchuk's future fate. If so, Russia, which keeps trying to discredit the Ukrainian authorities, would benefit from publicly stating that Medvedchuk is being held by Ukrainian law enforcers, as opposed to fleeing Ukraine's official statements. Medvedchuk's wife, host Oksana Marchenko, who recorded an April 13 address to Vladimir Zelensky, may also have previously claimed that her husband had disappeared. She, like the pro-Russian TV channels, says that Medvedchuk is allegedly "illegally detained by the SBU." Recall that Medvedchuk was announced suspicions and the court selected preventive measures in the criminal proceedings on oil and gas extraction in the Black Sea and on aiding the activities of a terrorist organization through the supply of coal from the occupied territories of Donbass. He should be under house arrest, but escaped from his estate, thereby violating the obligations under the preventive measure.

Anonymous telegram channels controlled by the Russian secret services are spreading the message that the prospects for an exchange of Viktor Medvedchuk are minimal, calling the Ukrainian president's proposal an "information trap. At the same time, they spread the thesis that Lukashenka might as well "detain employees of the Ukrainian embassy and offer to exchange them for Medvedchuk. On March 22, the Belarusian KGB said that spies allegedly worked under the cover of the Ukrainian embassy. The next day, it became known that Belarus announced the expulsion of 12 Ukrainian diplomats and the closure of the Ukrainian consulate in Brest.

This is the message that has been circulating in pro-Russian telegram channels in recent days. Specifically, it is claimed that Ukraine received $3.5 billion from financial structures in March, and now must pay back this money in the equivalent of $5 billion. Some messages also add that Ukraine must pay back its other debts, and the Ukrainian authorities, unlike former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, cannot negotiate a debt restructuring in war conditions, as the ex-president negotiated during the ATO. We can assume that the message is being spread in order to discredit Ukraine's allies - the EU countries, which will support us in the fight against Russia, and to show that they are not such allies if they demand the return of debts. In reality, the issue of debt repayment is complicated and ambiguous and it is almost impossible to find out all the information about full assistance and support from allied countries in war conditions. The Media Detector recently already described why the media should not have the whole truth about the war in war conditions. This includes what the allies are doing to support us.

The message spread by anonymous wiretaps after the UN reported a record 12.6 percent increase in food prices in Europe, especially for grain and oil. The price spike is clear, as Ukraine and the Russian Federation provided about a third of the world's exports of wheat, 20% of corn, and nearly 80% of sunflower oil. Trade was mainly through the Black Sea, now blocked. So the price increase is true, but the cause is not the Ukrainians, but the war started by Russia.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in her speech tells how Ukrainians fought to make borshch an exclusively Ukrainian national dish and do not want to share it. In her opinion, this is "xenophobia, Nazism and extremism in all its manifestations. Probably it is a reaction to the official inclusion of borsch in the National List of Cultural Heritage of Ukraine back in 2020 and the corresponding application to UNESCO in 2021 to recognize borsch as Ukrainian at the international level. And it was Russia that repeatedly tried to call the achievements of Ukrainian culture Russian, and a year ago, the Russian media spread a fake that Google recognized borsch as a Russian dish..

Read more: "Already less than 25 million": Russian propaganda counts Ukrainians by the amount of bread consumed. Why is this manipulation?

Such a thesis was spread by former Russian President and Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev. The politician's statements about Ukraine were spread by a number of Russian propaganda media. Medvedev said that Ukraine had mentally turned into the Third Reich and once again accused Ukrainians of Nazism. In addition, he added that Ukrainianism is a fake that never existed in history and does not exist now. In fact, the thesis that Ukraine is a state that historically did not exist, and consequently Ukrainians do not exist either, is not new to Russian politicians and propaganda. Russia constantly speculates on our history, claiming that Ukraine is an inferior state that did not exist and has no right to exist, because it has no history, culture, etc., unlike the so-called "great Russian culture. Such theses are beneficial for Russian propaganda, because in this way Russia seems to justify its criminal military actions on the territory of Ukraine, claiming that, firstly, everything Ukrainian is a fake, and secondly, Ukrainians have turned into Nazis.

This thesis is spread by telegram channels administered by Russian special services. Pro-Kremlin telegram channels were spreading similar messages about the blame of "the collective West for everything that is happening in Ukraine" even before the full-scale Russian invasion began. In reality, Ukraine is not in "conflict" with Russia, but in war. Russia launched a war against Ukraine in 2014, first by occupying Crimea and then parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions; in 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukrainian territories. According to the UN, as of April 3, at least 1,417 civilians had been killed and another 2,038 wounded since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.

Censorship in Russia is trying to block almost the only resource that is still delivering truthful information about the war against Ukraine. That is why yesterday Roskomnadzor reported that it made a protocol on the Russian Wikipedia for not removing "unreliable information" about the war against Ukraine. On March 29, for the second time, Roskomnadzor demanded that Russian Wikipedia remove the article "Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)." The Roskomnadzor press service called it "false content aimed at misinforming Russian users" - because the article indicated the number of dead and wounded Ukrainian civilians, with references to UN data, as well as the number of destroyed Russian soldiers (according to the General Staff of the AFU), and also for the fact that the article calls the war a war. It was authored by Russian wikipedist Oleg Yunakov; the article was viewed 5 million times in the first week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

For refusal to remove this article, Roskomnadzor is threatening Wikipedia with a fine of 4 million rubles (about $50,000), and almost from the beginning of the war the agency is also threatening to block Wikipedia in Russia.

Earlier, it was reported that a well-known Russian wikepedist Mark Bernstein was detained for 15 days in Belarus for allegedly resisting the police. His personal data, as well as hundreds of other Russian wikepedists after the war are published by anonymous telegram channels to put pressure on them. The Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine reports that Russian authorities and propagandists are discrediting Wikipedia in order to convince the public that any information about the war in Ukraine is fake.

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.

According to the Center for Counteracting Disinformation, this is the message spread by Russian propagandists who claim that the Ukrainian government seeks to starve Ukrainians to death and remove grain from the country. The propagandists also assure that "food security of Ukraine is under threat," "disruption of the sowing season and military operations will lead to starvation in Ukraine. According to the Center's report, these theses were invented by the Russian UN office.

"Humanitarian problems are in the temporarily occupied territories, where the enemy does not allow humanitarian supplies. In Ukraine, the Kremlin's famine message is promoted by the sub-sanctioned Telegram channel "Country Politics" and pseudo-expert Dmytro Vasilets (the "State" party, whose activities have been stopped by the decision of the NSDC)," the Center explains and adds that in fact Ukraine has supplies for domestic consumption for at least 2 years.

According to the Center for Counteracting Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Russia continues to use recruited foreign politicians to form a mistaken public opinion about its own power. According to the report, experts record the promotion of the thesis that a new world order is now being formed, which, according to experts, will be led by Russia, China and India.

"The foreign experts include former Brazilian President Lula da Silva as well as Kremlin mouthpiece political analyst Rafael Ordukhanian. Putin's media rhetoric indicates that Russia expects sanctions to ease in the near future. This is probably why the Kremlin is making statements about the partial withdrawal of Russian troops in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions," the Center says. They add that all these statements are manipulation and because none of the previous Kremlin ultimatums have been executed, the enemy is trying to mislead the international community. That is why they talk about the completion of the offensive operation in the north of Ukraine.

Anonymous telegram channels controlled by the Russian secret services regularly repeat that the state of affairs at the front is totally different from what we see on television or hear from the authorities. However, anonymous telegram channels do not give any examples.

Read more about the peculiarities of informing in wartime in the column by Otar Dovzhenko.

Telegram channels administered by Russia's intelligence services are speculating on the US president's visit to Poland. They take various quotes from Biden and other politicians who allegedly claim that Poland, despite NATO's refusal, is still sending troops to Ukraine. Propagandists do not speak unequivocally but only speculate and push.

According to the Center for Combating Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, the materials of the opposition to the Putin regime refer to allegedly separatist plans of the Ukrainian allies regarding the territory of our state. In particular, such reports refer to the danger of the introduction of peacekeeping missions on the territory of Ukraine, as it seems to end with the "division of the territory of Ukraine" - the rollback of the territories to the state of 1939.

"Among the countries that, like Russia, seem to infringe on the territorial integrity of Ukraine, pro-Kremlin pseudo-analysts call Hungary, Romania and even Poland. After the de facto defeat of a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine and unsuccessful attempts to hold pro-Russian rallies in Serbia, Bulgaria, Armenia, and Syria, the enemy proceeded to unsuccessful demonization of individual countries. Information infusions of this kind only show that the Russian disinformation and propaganda ecosystem continues to fail, "the Center said in a statement.

Pro-Russian telegram channels spread information that rumours about Zelensky's quick escape are well-founded. Such reports assure, that the President of Ukraine may go to Brussels to meet with US President Biden, who will visit Belgium on March 24. Such texts predict that Kyiv will be blocked in a few weeks, and Zelensky will not be able to return there after the meeting.

There is no reason to claim this. There is also no official information that would confirm the planned meeting between Biden and Zelensky.

Russian politicians and the media are spreading this statement, trying to further turn citizens in Russia and abroad, especially in Germany and France, against the "collective West".

НIn fact, this statement is manipulative, as most of the sanctions imposed on Russia are aimed at the country's political leadership, elites, defense and financial sectors, etc. And the purpose of these economic measures is not to undermine the so-called potential of Russia and Belarus, it is a response to aggression and full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Such messages are spread in telegram channels controlled by the Russian secret services. In particular, this message was posted on the ‘Resident’ telegram channel. Such messages state that the United States is afraid of Putin and his threats.

In fact, this statement is manipulative and has no evidence. In this way, Russian propagandists probably want to discredit Ukraine's ally and neglect all the support Ukraine has received from the United States.

These kinds of messages are being transmitted in pro-Russian telegram channels. On the "Panchenko" telegram channel, NATO's position is characterized as cowardly due to its continuing refusals to close the skies above Ukraine. In the message, it is also said that NATO is interested in prolonging the war (even though the channel calls the war itself a conflict.) The core idea is this: the longer the war, the weaker Russia becomes and Ukraine is being pitied by no one. In reality, there are no official reasons to state the above. This rhetoric only discredits Ukrainian allies in this war.

Such a statement by the speaker of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Zakharova is quoted by pro-Russian telegram channels. However, this is manipulation because even at the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities called it a process of so-called denazification and demilitarization, and the current leaders of Ukraine — a bunch of Nazis.