This claim is another example of Russian disinformation built around a fabricated screenshot. Lviv’s Department of Education has formally stated that no such incident took place in any preschool in the city.
Social-media users and Russian outlets are amplifying a claim that a Russian-speaking child was denied a New Year’s gift at a kindergarten in Lviv.
Pro-Kremlin outlets framed the alleged episode as evidence of what they call the results of “forced Ukrainization” and the imposition of supposed national intolerance by Ukrainian authorities.
The disinformation originated from a screenshot purporting to show a post on the social network Threads. The image contains no links to a real account or any verifiable author information and recounts an anecdote about a St. Nicholas Day celebration in which a girl named Dasha was allegedly denied a gift because she spoke Russian. The post claims to quote the mother of another child at the same kindergarten. In reality, neither the account nor the story can be authenticated: the screenshot is fabricated, and the profile photo used in it belongs to a Russian woman from Podolsk, underscoring the manufactured nature of the claim.
The claim was also reviewed by the Lviv City Council’s Department of Education and Culture. Its head, Andrii Zakaliuk, said the department had conducted a thorough check and found no evidence of such an incident, stressing that nothing of the kind occurred in any municipal kindergarten in Lviv.
“In Lviv’s kindergartens, all children are treated equally. Our educational institutions are spaces of safety and support, and a child cannot and should not be held responsible for the views or actions of adults,” Zakaliuk said.
Such fabrications fit a broader information campaign designed to advance the narrative that Ukraine operates a state policy of language-based discrimination, with the aim of inflaming social tensions and provoking internal conflict.
Previously, StopFake has debunked claims that the Russian language was supposedly “banned” in Ukraine or that the country had launched a so-called “language genocide.”
