The network is spreading information about a 4-year-old boy who was allegedly left unattended at a bus station in Kherson. The message about this received more than 35 thousand shares on Facebook in two days, and the information was picked up by propagandists. However, this is fake.

It was noticed by journalists from the Kherson regional media Kavun.city and the NotaYenota project, which provides informal education on recognizing fakes. In their opinion, the account that spread this is not a personal page, but rather a bot that systematically duplicates information from the banned Russian social network Odnoklassniki. Most of the content on it consists of holiday greetings, quotes, etc. The message about the child from Kherson did not have any links to official sources of information.

This situation actually happened, but in June 2021. A four-year-old child was left unattended at the Kherson bus station. After a conversation between the police and the grandfather, it turned out that the father, while doing military service in Mariupol, left the child in the care of his partner. After a quarrel, she promised that she would take the child to the soldier’s parents, but did not fulfill her promise and left the boy at the station.

According to the aforementioned experts, the spread of such fakes is likely an attempt by Russian propagandists to identify the incentives that cause the greatest public reaction and concern. This time, the Russians decided to test the reaction of Ukrainians on children, using an old story. In addition, in this way they want to discredit Ukrainians in general and military families in particular. They say that Ukrainians treat children carelessly, which means Russia must correct this.