On January 8, a Georgian Facebook user posted a photo of a card that was described as being sent from one of the bars in the so-called Green Zone in Baghdad. There this card is used as a table cover. On the map, the contours and names of states have been changed, and the territory of Georgia has been merged with Ukraine. The user writes: “It turns out that our Ukrainian friends not only planned to conquer Russia, but also consider Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan part of their territory”.

Georgian fact-checkers from the Myth Detector project drew attention to this post.

In fact, the photo shared by a Facebook user shows a card from the board game Risk and has nothing to do with Ukraine's attitude toward other countries' territories or its plans for conquest. The borders of states on the map of the game are placed arbitrarily and cannot be perceived as a source of information about geography.

Since February 24, 2022, when the Detector Media team has been conducting the Disinformation Chronicles, this is the first time a board game map has been used as evidence of the propagandists’ worldview. Maps have long been used to justify territorial claims or intimidation over the seizure of territories. For example, Russians say that the Poles are planning to occupy Halychyna and Volyn, because when these territories were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita. They also say that all Ukraine’s neighbors have territorial claims against each other. Despite these reports, Russia is the only state on Ukraine's border that has invaded other states in the 21st century. The Russians invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014.