An alleged report from the Israeli publication The Jerusalem Post began to spread online, in which Avi Melamedson, a pastry chef from Israel, accuses Volodymyr Zelenskyi of the fact that, due to corruption in Ukraine, Ukrainian weapons fell into the hands of Hamas militants. Thus, the President of Ukraine “undermines the trust” of the Israeli people and seems to be handing over weapons to the enemy. As a sign of protest and “punishment”, the pastry chef baked a cake with Zelenskyi on the gallows, and also published an angry video on Instagram about this. It's fake.

Users of social networks and authoritative publications are discussing where Hamas got such a large number of weapons from the Russian-Ukrainian war. Experts from the Center for Countering Disinformation analyzed the cake report and found that The Jerusalem Post did not actually create such a story. Yes, Avi Melamedson recorded a video and distributed it on Instagram, but its subject was not Volodymyr Zelenskyi and the accusation against him of Ukraine’s support for Hamas, and in the publication the pastry chef spoke about hate speech against Jews.

In this case, Russia uses discredit tactics - undermining the authority of an institution or person to reduce trust and legitimacy. Previously, we also wrote about how Russian propaganda systematically uses the topic of corruption in Ukraine to achieve its goals. Russia is trying to maintain the image of Ukraine as “the most corrupt state in Europe” and emphasize that the anti-corruption policy of the Ukrainian government is more like an imitation of pro-Western reforms.