Pro-Russian resources are spreading information that the Ukrainian army has stopped attacking and gone on the defensive, and the Russian military is stretching the Ukrainian Armed Forces along the entire front line. In asserting this, propagandists refer to an interview with former Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Hanna Maliar, which she gave to the online publication Liga.net.

Experts from the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security developed this case. It turned out that the Russians manipulated Maliar’s words. In the interview, she made an assumption about the task of the Russians: to prevent the Ukrainian army from concentrating forces in a specific place. Also, the former Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine noted that it is the Russian army that is stretching its troops along the front line in order to exhaust the Ukrainian defenders and prepare itself for offensive actions. In the end, there were no statements from Maliar that Ukraine was no longer advancing.

Thus, Russian propaganda is trying to discredit the Ukrainian counteroffensive and assure everyone around that the advantage on the front line lies in Russia. Previously, we refuted the information that Valerii Zaluzhnyi allegedly ordered preparations for defense between Mykolaiv and Odesa.