Headlines from an alternate reality A roundup of fake news stories about Ukraine Russian propagandists created and amplified in 2024
Like in previous years, Russian propaganda outlets and pro-Kremlin Telegram channels spent 2024 spreading all manner of fake news stories about Ukraine, its leaders, its policies, and its allies. Journalists from the fact-checking project Provereno.Media have compiled a list of the most widespread — and most memorable — examples. Meduza shares a translation of their roundup, which was originally published by the outlet iStories.
Claim: Zelensky spent Western military aid on Goebbels’s villa, Hitler’s car, and luxury vehicles
Since the beginning of 2022, Western countries have provided Ukraine with aid totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. Unsurprisingly, Russian propagandists have repeatedly accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his inner circle of embezzling the funds. This year, they claimed that by the end of 2023, Zelensky had allegedly purchased a mansion in the U.K. from King Charles III, a winery in Italy from singer Sting, the former villa of Joseph Goebbels near Berlin, a casino in Northern Cyprus, and a hotel in Courchevel.
The story of Zelensky’s illicit enrichment was spread not just through Telegram channels but also by major Russian news outlets, including RT and RBC. The widespread circulation of these fake stories beyond the Z-community was supplemented by a deliberate “legitimization” strategy: fabricated “evidence” was introduced either through sites posing as reputable Western media or through fake web pages for properties Zelensky supposedly purchased. In some instances, the stories were made even more convincing with claims that the transactions were conducted via Film Heritage Inc., a Belize-based offshore company owned by the Zelensky family and widely publicized in 2019 through OCCRP’s Pandora Papers investigation.
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All of the fabricated media “sources” cited in Russian news reports and Telegram channels were registered just a few days before the claims were published. Much of the photo “evidence,” like other material on the sites, was AI-generated. In some cases, the file names of photos cited by English-language fake news sites matched the titles of articles published on the Russian newspaper Gazeta.ru.
The propagandists even targeted Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, claiming that she purchased a Bugatti for 4.5 million euros ($4.6 million) during a visit to France. They used the same methods to legitimize this story, complete with forged transaction documents and an AI video featuring a “Bugati dealer employee” discussing the sale of the vehicle. They also claimed that Zelensky himself had bought a car that once belonged to Hitler, again using fabricated evidence.
Other high-ranking Ukrainian officials weren’t spared, either. For instance, Russian channels reported that Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, paid $27 million to secure a spot on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential People. They cited a fake BBC video based on a non-existent Bellingcat investigation, with the video first appearing on a channel called “Putin on Telegram.”
Claim: Trump appeared on Ukraine’s ‘enemies’ database
Russian propaganda took an active interest in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, creating and amplifying fake stories about Democratic candidate Kamala Harris from U.S. right-wing bloggers. After Trump’s victory, pro-Kremlin channels unleashed a wave of fake reports about how Ukrainians were responding to the election’s outcome. Unlike his opponent, Trump hadn’t promised to support Kyiv “for as long as it takes,” which supposedly meant his return to the White House outraged Ukrainians. Z-channels began to feature fake announcements calling for donations to assassinate Trump, as well as doctored videos of a Ukrainian priest allegedly referring to Trump as the “Antichrist” and the “devil.”
These outlets paid particular attention to the supposed reaction of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. On the one hand, they shared a video allegedly showing Azov fighters burning Trump’s books in protest against his plan to end the war. The footage appears to have been staged, and there’s no open-source evidence of any such a book burning. On the other hand, the same channels, citing the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), claimed that after Trump’s election, Ukrainian soldiers were surrendering eight times more frequently. However, the video supporting this claim was fabricated, and the ISW has never reported such statistics.
Various public figures also reported that shortly after Trump’s election, he was removed from Myrotvorets, an unofficial Ukrainian site that compiles information about people accused of colluding with Russia or supporting separatist movements. These claims were based on a fake screenshot from the site that circulated in 2018.
Finally, propagandists framed Trump’s victory as a sign that U.S. support for Ukraine would soon come to a halt. For instance, they cited The Wall Street Journal in claiming that newly elected Vice President J.D. Vance had twice refused to take a call from Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office. However, the WSJ never published such a story. Shortly after the election, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels also circulated a fake screenshot of a tweet supposedly from Elon Musk that featured an image of a dollar bill with Trump flipping the middle finger and the caption: “The last dollar for Zelensky.”
Claim: ‘Traces of Ukraine’ everywhere
Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials have been quick to blame Ukrainian authorities, intelligence agencies, or even ordinary citizens for nearly every crime committed on Russian soil. While some accusations — like ones about arson attacks on military enlistment offices or the killing of General Igor Kirillov — may seem somewhat plausible, most others come across as little more than an attempt to shift responsibility onto a convenient scapegoat rather than identifying the real culprits.
For instance, shortly after the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall in March, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed in a national address that there were “traces of Ukrainian involvement” in the attack. He said that the suspects had fled toward Ukraine, where “an escape route” had been set up for them to cross the border. In April, Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov repeated the allegations, and in May, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov followed suit. However, months have passed without any convincing evidence, and the largest terrorist attack on Russian soil in two decades has faded from the headlines — Putin didn’t even mention it during his annual year-end press conference.
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Official claims of Ukraine’s involvement were amplified by propagandists. For example, the state-run RIA Novosti, citing an obscure “military expert” from Tajikistan, alleged that the Ukrainian embassy in Tajikistan had spent weeks recruiting locals for its International Legion, suggesting these recruits were responsible for the attack. The article relied on a screenshot of a Facebook post from the Ukrainian embassy, which had been circulating on Telegram for over 24 hours by that point and was likely forged.
A similar tactic was used as “evidence” of a Ukrainian connection in events in other countries. For example, when protests broke out in Georgia after the government suspended talks on E.U. membership, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and media spread a screenshot of a listing supposedly posted on a Ukrainian job portal. The ad was said to be seeking “strong men” with protest experience to send to Tbilisi. The forgery was based on a job listing from a few days earlier in Chernihiv for a security guard.
Other fake stories alleged Ukraine’s involvement in a failed assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in May. Major Russian newspapers such as Moskovsky Komsomolets and Argumenty i Fakti claimed that the wife of writer Yury Cintula, who shot at the politician, was a refugee who had been in contact with Ukrainian intelligence services and had convinced her husband to attack the pro-Russian Slovak leader. However, these claims were refuted by local authorities, journalists who examined the documents, and testimonies from the couple’s acquaintances. Cintula’s wife had lived in Slovakia for at least several decades, and there was no mention of her Ukrainian origins in any open sources.
Two months later, according to Z-channels, an assassination attempt on another pro-Kremlin European leader, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was supposedly thwarted. The circulating reports claimed that a refugee from the Ukrainian city of Ternopil was supposed to plant an explosive device in Orban’s car, citing a recording of an alleged conversation between the would-be assassin and Ukrainian intelligence as evidence. However, Russian outlets based their reports on a fake website mimicking the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Demokrata, and the audio recording shared on the site was generated using AI.
Claim: Ukrainian looting in the Kursk region
After Ukrainian forces entered the Kursk region on August 6, propagandists began actively spreading reports about alleged war crimes committed by the Ukrainian military there.
One Russian Telegram channel wrote the following, referring to earlier reports of looting by Russian troops:
“The Russians are stealing washing machines and toilets,” [the Ukrainians] said. Now it’s clear why they said this — to cover up their own looting tendencies.
One of the earliest stories to emerge was that Ukrainian forces had stolen antique icons from the Kursk region and were selling them on Ukrainian websites. These claims were based on altered screenshots of genuine listings posted by Ukrainian residents of various cities, including some predating the operation in Kursk.
“Ukropsky Fresh” — a Telegram channel that specializes in forging messages purportedly from Ukrainian authorities, police, prosecutors, charities, and military units — played a significant role in disseminating these claims. For instance, anonymous bloggers circulated screenshots falsely claiming the Ukrainian military had executed civilians in Kursk — an alteration of posts originally about Russian crimes against civilians in Ukraine. Similarly, the channel spread a doctored post suggesting a washing machine had been stolen in Kursk and brought to a Ukrainian military unit, twisting real posts about logistical deliveries.
Independent, reliable information about events in the occupied areas of Russia's Kursk region remains unavailable. While the Ukrainian military organizes press tours for foreign journalists, it’s impossible to be completely certain that reporters are seeing an unbiased picture of what’s happening. Various outlets, citing eyewitnesses, have reported instances of looting in areas under the control of both Russian and Ukrainian forces. Nevertheless, at least some of the “evidence” circulating online is demonstrably fake.
Claim: Foreign officers are constantly dying in Ukraine
The Kremlin, the Russian Defense Ministry, and various Russian officials and propagandists often talk about foreign mercenaries and instructors fighting on Ukraine’s side. While it’s true that there are hundreds of volunteers from other countries in various Ukrainian military units, and some have even been captured by Russian forces, propagandists never miss an opportunity to reinforce the Kremlin’s narrative that Russia is fighting not against Ukraine but against NATO. They often report the deaths of high-ranking officers or career soldiers from NATO countries on the front lines.
The laziest among these fake stories rely on one basic tactic: when a Western country reports the sudden death of a senior military officer, Z-channels claim that the death was the result of a Russian strike on Ukraine. Examples include Polish General Adam Marczak and Canadian Lieutenant Colonel Kent Miller, who both died in Belgium this year. According to pro-Kremlin outlets, they were killed in Chasiv Yar and near Sumy respectively — a claim unsupported by any evidence.
In some cases, fabricated social media posts serve as “proof.” For instance, in September, after a missile strike on Poltava reportedly killed more than 50 Ukrainian soldiers, Z-channels claimed that Swedish instructors were among the casualties and that local children were being forced to donate blood for wounded foreigners. These claims were based on doctored screenshots of posts attributed to a Swedish volunteer and a Ukrainian medic, both of which were fake.
A similar fake story circulated a month and a half later, claiming that the wife of an American pilot had posted on social media that her husband had been killed (along with several F-16 fighter jets) in a Russian strike on an airbase in the Khmelnytskyi region. In this case, the authors of the story didn’t just fake a Facebook post — they created a fake profile of a real person.
In the spring, propagandists reacted especially strongly to a statement by French President Emmanuel Macron in which he expressed his willingness to send French troops to Ukraine. The newspapers Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed that in early May, around 100 soldiers from the French Foreign Legion had been deployed near Sloviansk. The outlets cited reports from an anonymous pro-war Telegram channel and French conspiracy theorists, which stated that the soldiers were from a unit stationed in South America, responsible for guarding the French spaceport in Kourou.
A few days later, pro-war accounts began circulating photos of coffins with French soldiers allegedly killed in Ukraine. In reality, the photo had been taken 4.5 years earlier at a ceremony honoring soldiers who died during an anti-terrorist operation in Mali.
Claim: Ukraine tries to humiliate Ukrainian Orthodox Church members
In August, the Verkhovna Rada passed a law effectively banning the activities of the historically Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). The churches under its jurisdiction are being encouraged to join the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). Russian propagandists have been exploiting the issue of the church split for years, using fake stories to promote their own narrative.
Pro-Kremlin channels have frequent tried to depict the Moscow-independent OCU as atheists bent on destroying the “competing” church. Soon after the controversial law was passed, the Russian state news network Channel One aired footage purportedly showing a former UOC church in Vinnytsia being turned into a nightclub. In reality, the video was filmed five years earlier in a nightclub in Warsaw. A similar story spread about a church in Lutsk, which was supposedly transformed into a laundromat. However, this story was based on a 2023 news report about a laundromat that had been opened in the back room of a local Greek Catholic (not Orthodox) church.
Russian propagandists often claim that this alleged persecution extends to individual parishioners, as well. After the controversial law was passed, a video circulated showing a priest from the OCU in Chernivtsi supposedly refusing to perform funeral rites for deceased Ukrainian soldiers baptized in the UOC. The original video, however, was filmed back in 2023, and in reality, it shows a UOC priest refusing to conduct the rites alongside OCU chaplains.
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Claim: Western media is turning against Ukraine
Toward the end of the year, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels published several fake stories suggesting that by the third year of the full-scale war, major foreign media outlets (especially American ones) were so exhausted from covering it that their own staff had started making anti-Ukrainian remarks on air. Anchors were allegedly laughing after segments about Ukrainian military losses, complaining about the constant discussion of Ukraine, mockingly singing Christmas carols after news of refugees being evicted from social housing in France, or airing segments about a “Ukraine is shit” tattoo. However, all of these videos had been edited, and the content was taken from fragments of various programs aired years earlier.
This method of creating fake stories is not new, nor is it used solely to support the narrative of Western society’s fatigue with the war in Ukraine. For example, in December, a supposed clip from NBC’s coverage of the Notre-Dame Cathedral reopening ceremony went viral — it showed Macron greeting Zelensky while the American network allegedly promoted the show “Great Thieves of the 21st Century,” clearly insinuating corruption by the Ukrainian leader. Once again, the video had been edited, and a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel spread the fake story.
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Original story by Daniil Fedkevich for Provereno.Media and iStories
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