This thesis was circulated on social networks, in particular on telegram channels broadcasting pro-Kremlin rhetoric. Reports say the UN has released a report discrediting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. The authors of the messages refer to the report for the period from August 1, 2022 to January 31, 2023. This is manipulation.

The fact-checkers of the VoxCheck project checked this thesis and found that the report refers to the situation with respect for human rights in Ukraine and in the territories occupied by Russia. During the investigation, the UN Commission recorded numerous war crimes committed by the army of the terrorist country. The UN report also identified specific war crimes, which include attacks on civilians and shelling of energy infrastructure facilities, deliberate killings, false imprisonment, torture, rape and other types of sexual violence, as well as the illegal transfer and deportation of children. However, the report did address issues of religious freedom.

Of the 38 pages of the report, several paragraphs were allocated to the topic of freedom of religion in Ukraine which took less than one page. That is why the thesis that the entire report is devoted to “discrimination against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)” is manipulative. Moreover, in the report, in only one sentence, they suggested that the activities of the state against the UOC could be discriminatory, and did not claim this as a fait accompli.

Propagandists systematically spread manipulations about the UN report to hide their crimes from domestic audiences and show that Russia is not the aggressor and is not to blame for anything. For example, analysts of Detector Media analyzed a manipulation stating that the UN investigation “found no evidence of the genocide of Ukrainians” during the Russian-Ukrainian war. We explained the message that the so-called “evacuation” of Ukrainian children is “not a war crime”. They also found a message that allegedly the UN Security Council “does not care about the suffering of the inhabitants of Donbas”.