Ukraine blamed a Russian disinformation campaign Thursday after fake news posted online about its Winter Olympics team, including a story criticizing an athlete disqualified for trying to highlight war deaths.

The fake posts, which racked up over a million views across multiple platforms, included a claim about Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych, banned from competing Thursday for wearing a helmet with images of athletes killed in the war.

“Russians have rolled out an information campaign to discredit Ukraine,” Kyiv’s centre for countering disinformation said Thursday.

“With such fakes, Russia is trying to discredit Ukrainians and undermine international support for Ukraine,” Ukraine’s sports minister Matviy Bidny told AFP.

One post digitally manipulated a text story by Reuters news agency about Heraskevych. It added false claims that his brother recruited soldiers for the war and a Hungarian athlete wore a sticker saying “we’re all fed up with U(kraine)”.

AFP saw Russian-language accounts on X make similar claims.

Other false stories online included claims that Ukrainian team members had been housed separately due to “toxic” behaviour; that doping controls had been eased for them to take “psychoactive substances”; and that 52 of their translators had absconded.

A fake video with a logo similar to US E! News entertainment television claimed rapper Snoop Dogg – who is covering the games for US network NBC – had refused a photo with the Ukraine team because of...

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