KHARKIV, Ukraine – A “car bombing,” an “attack” on a water station, and “mass graves” of Russian speakers “exterminated” by Ukraine’s military. President Vladimir Putin accusing Kyiv of committing “genocide.”
These are just four of the incendiary and utterly false claims Russia has made about Ukraine in the past several days, all focused on the Russian-controlled Donbas region, the site of the eight-year-old war. They are mixed with unproven or dubious, at best, reports that claim there’s a “Ukrainian agent” plotting bloody acts of sabotage, “Ukrainian terrorists” in a “secret hideout,” and Ukrainian artillery “shellings” just across the border in the Russian Rostov region.
In the past two weeks, BuzzFeed News recorded more than 20 such reports from Russia’s state-run media, pro-Kremlin journalists and social media figures, and Moscow’s separatist proxy forces in eastern Ukraine. They came across television, radio, separatist websites, Twitter, Telegram channels, and more. All were peddled without any evidence that could be independently verified to prove them true.
The reports are meant to rile up those who sympathize with Russia and to portray Kyiv and the West, not Russia, as the aggressors in the deepening security crisis in Europe — even though the opposite is true. Most concerning, the reports could provide the pretext, albeit bogus, Putin is seeking to justify a new invasion of Ukraine.
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