Antiwar activists in Russia spread fake military recruitment flyers directing readers to lists of soldiers killed in Ukraine

Several libraries in Russia’s Belgorod region unpublished indexes honoring local men killed fighting in Ukraine after the appearance of fake military recruitment flyers that directed readers to the “Memory Z” lists.

The disguised antiwar leaflets featured patriotic artwork, a QR code, photos of soldiers, and the phrase “You’re the hope of the Motherland. Join us!” The pictured soldiers, it turns out, were men killed in Ukraine, and the code sent readers to the Belgorod Central Library System’s lists of the dead. Libraries started taking these URLs offline a day after the flyers were discovered.

According to journalists at Mediazona, Belgorod libraries published the local casualty lists under a 2022 law establishing public “remembrance books” to commemorate “those who died defending the Fatherland.”