StopFake #153 with Irena Chalupa
The latest edition of StopFake News with Irena Chalupa. PACE Approves Resolution Abolishing Political Sanctions against Russia; Crimea Hosts International Ukrainian Diaspora Congress: Catalonia is not Crimea.
News
Fake: Crimea Hosts International Ukrainian Diaspora Congress
Russian and Crimean media reported last week that an international congress of Ukrainian diaspora organizations was held on the Russian occupied Crimea peninsula. The congress declared that it wanted to collaborate with what they called “constructive segments of Ukraine’s population”. Organizers claimed representatives from several European countries attended the gathering, including from the Ukrainian mainland, but these were not named for security reasons, RIA Novosti reported. Real Ukrainian diaspora organizations…
Fake: PACE Approves Resolution Abolishing Political Sanctions against Russia
Last week Ukrainian media reported that the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly approved a resolution laying the groundwork for the abolition of political sanctions against Russia. The story was quickly picked up by Russian media who added their own spin to produce a fake story that Ukrainian opposition to the resolution was rejected and sanctions against Russia would be lifted very soon. The Kremlin propagandists wanted to make it look…
Fake: No Military Pressure on Crimeans to Support Russian Annexation
With the Catalonian independence referendum remaining in the headlines some in the media have taken to comparing Catalonia to Crimea, a part of Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed in 2014. Bloomberg View columnist Leonid Bershidsky in an opinion piece entitled Why Catalonia Will Fail Where Crimea Succeeded claims that the Crimean referendum on secession did not take place at gunpoint. Bershidsky writes that “Neither the “little green men” nor uniformed…
StopFake #152 with Irena Chalupa
The latest edition of StopFake News with Irena Chalupa. Among the disinformation debunked this week: Ukrainian arms flood into Poland, Ukraine to be become a black market for organ transplants, droves of Ukrainian vacationers flood into Crimea.
Fake: Ukrainian Arms Flood into Poland
Polish-Ukrainian relations are a frequent target of disinformation generated not only by Russian but also by Polish media. This is the case with an opinion piece published in the Polska Niepodlegla portal about the alleged flood of weapons from Ukraine into Poland seemingly for the purpose of building an underground Ukrainian army. Entitled Why are Ukrainians bringing arms to Poland? Just last year tens of thousands of weapons were smuggled…
Fake: Ukraine’s Health Ministry Allows Ukrainians to be sold for Organs
Ukraine’s Health Ministry plans to introduce a pilot kidney donor transplant program in 2018. The program has yet to be approved by parliament but it is already being hailed by Russian media as one that “will turn Ukraine into a supplier of organs from corpses”. Russian newspaper Moskovskyi Komsomolets predicts that the transplant program will “not only destroy public health, but turn Ukraine into a black market transplant center”. Ukraine’s…
Fake: Ukrainians Visiting Crimea in Droves
According to the Russian Security Service (FSB) Crimea border control, well after the end of the vacation season Ukrainians are pouring into the annexed peninsula in droves. Russia’s official news agency RIA Novosti and other publications featured several stories about this alleged late season vacation rush. Official Ukrainian agencies meanwhile present a somewhat different picture, as do recent sociological polls. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians heading to Crimea, Huge tourist…
StopFake #151 with Romeo Kokriatsky
Fake Ukrainian ISIS militants, Ukraine’s new language law and fake Roshen chocolate expansion in Russia.
Fake: President Poroshenko’s Confectionary Company Opening New Branches in Russia
Russian web sites, both reputable and marginal, regularly publish fake stories claiming that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s confectionery company Roshen is expanding its operations in the Russian Federation. All these stories are fake, Roshen has only one factory in Russia which opened in 2001 in Lipetsk, 438 kilometers (272 mi) southeast of Moscow and even that is now closing. The latest fakes claim that new Roshen factories are opening in…
