In the run-up to the US presidential election, Russian resources were spreading information that the Pennsylvania state government was forcing voters from the state's Ukrainian community to vote for Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump. If they did not, the Pennsylvania government would allegedly stop funding the Tryzub (Trident) church and other Ukrainian projects. In reporting this, the propagandists referred to a video allegedly from the American publication PennLive, in which the leader of the Ukrainian community allegedly made a corresponding statement.

In fact, this information is fake. This is written in the VoxCheck project. PennLive did not publish such a video on its official website, nor on its pages on Facebook, Ixi or Instagram.

It is worth noting that Pennsylvania does indeed have one of the largest Ukrainian diasporas — at least 112,000 people — as well as a network of Ukrainian churches. However, a search of open sources, in particular, in American media and Google Maps, showed that there is no church called Tryzub (Trident) in Pennsylvania.

With this fake, the Russians are trying to claim that Ukrainians in Pennsylvania were allegedly blackmailed and essentially left with no choice of who to vote for. At the same time, it is already known that Trump won in Pennsylvania, thus receiving 19 electoral votes.

We previously wrote about a fake video story that showed the US elections as the main target of a “Ukrainian disinformation campaign”.