Russia is actively spreading disinformation about Kharkiv in the media and continues to reinforce panic about the situation there. Now they claim that Kharkiv is allegedly being prepared for defense, namely, they are turning residential buildings into “fortresses”.  Such “news” is accompanied by traditional messages about “mass evacuation”, preparation of residents for life during active hostilities, migration of enterprises from the city, etc. However, this is manipulation.

Specialists from the StopFake project drew attention to it. They found out that this manipulation was created on the basis of an interview with Major General of the Reserve Armed Forces of Ukraine Serhii Kryvonos on the Pershyi Zakhidnyi (First Western) TV channel, from which propagandists took out a quote to create disinformation. During the conversation, the presenters asked the major general whether the Russians could capture Kharkiv from the Sumy region, to which Serhii Kryvonos replied that Kharkiv is not Avdiivka or Bakhmut, but a city of much larger size - tens of times larger, “and the perimeter of Kharkiv is almost 80 kilometers, and in order to surround or block such a city, the Russians must have the necessary force and means”.

“For our part, we must understand that in Kharkiv, for example, there are a large number of houses for different purposes, and the task of preparing the city for defense is, perhaps, one of the main tasks, so that we do not have such failures in the unpreparedness of defense, as was the case in Bakhmut. The city was not ready for defense in the military engineering sense. The better we prepare, and the number of buildings in Kharkiv exceeds more than 22 thousand houses, and if each house is a fortress, then one will understand how much of it will need to be taken”, Kryvonos actually said, and he noted that with proper defense Kharkiv can stand not one or two, but three years. At the same time, the major general said that the Ukrainian army should not retreat into deep defense, but continue to work to destroy the critical infrastructure of the Russian rear.

It was these words of Kryvonos that Russian propagandists presented as a fait accompli, as if in Kharkiv they had already begun to literally turn residential buildings into “fortresses”. During the interview, Serhii Kryvonos also said that precisely such a defense may not be achieved if Russia’s economic capacity is undermined by Ukrainian attacks.

It should be noted that several lines of fortifications were erected in the Kharkiv region. Earlier, the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration Oleh Syniehubov stated that the third stage of construction of fortifications in the region was already underway.

Propagandists spread such manipulations to cause panic among the population.