Pro-Kremlin resources, citing an alleged resident of the Ukrainian village of Novhorodske, disseminate information that the Ukrainian Armed Forces “threatened civilians, intimidated them, and also took children out without the consent of their parents”. Also, military personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces allegedly demanded intimate services from locals.

In fact, there is no real evidence of this. The Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security at the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine reports that the publication of  “evidence” on behalf of “victims of the Kyiv regime” is one of the tactics of Russian propaganda. Russia cynically uses residents of the occupied territories or even Ukrainian prisoners of war, forcing them to voice absurd “testimony” or “confession” about the alleged atrocities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Therefore, Russian propaganda probably resorted to the mentioned tactics this time too.

The Center adds that in this way propagandists seek to arouse indignation and the illusion of truthfulness among the audience, although the facts presented cannot be verified.

Such “video confessions” are aimed primarily at residents of front-line territories. Propaganda is trying to undermine their trust in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and convince them that the Ukrainian military really “is the main source of threat to the civilian population”.

Somewhat earlier, we analyzed a similar fake, which was that the Ukrainian authorities were allegedly forcibly taking children away from their parents in the Donbas in order to hand them over to pedophiles or organs.