«Terrible Pentagon and Experiments on Ukrainians»: Informational Reality of Occupied Donbas

Residents of Donbas every day are under pressure of propagandistic Russian media and informational resources of the CDDLR militants, who diligently create «horror stories» about Ukraine. Moreover, this information is received by both residents of the occupied territories and those who have the opportunity to watch these dubious media in the free part of Ukraine.

«Vchasno» journalists checked what the masters of fakes told people last month.

COVID-19: the militants do not let people on the territory controlled by Ukraine

The occupation authorities of the Donetsk region claim that the situation with the coronavirus pandemic in Ukraine gets so bad that the passage of citizens through the demarcation line should be stopped immediately.

On June 28, they closed the only operating checkpoint called «Olenivka».

Militant-controlled media are spreading information about the rapid growth of patients with COVID-19 in Ukraine. At the same time, CDDLR propagandists did not inform the residents of the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions that as on July 6, 765 cases of coronavirus were confirmed in Donbas controlled by the Ukrainian authorities, 10 people died. At the same time, in the CDDR, according to the so-called «DPR and LPR Ministry of Health», 1,774 cases of the disease were recorded, and 86 people died from the coronavirus.

Since March they began to spread fakes on this topic. First, about the outbreak of the coronavirus in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. So-called «official news agency of the DPR» DAN constantly reports about hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers in Donbas who suffer from coronavirus, as well as deaths among Ukrainian defenders in the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) zone.

Virus hidden in the app

According to the representative of the so-called «People's Militia» of the temporarily occupied territories of the Luhansk region Yakov Osadchy, the special services of Ukraine with the technical support of Western colleagues conduct a social experiment on the citizens of Ukraine, for which they distribute the Internet application «Diy Vdoma» among the country's population.

«Together with the application, a virus is installed on the smartphone, which is capable of transmitting personal information to the special services without the knowledge of the owner, as well as turning on the microphone and camera of the device,» he said.

At the same time, the terrorist did not provide any evidences, and this statement was removed from all Internet resources.

According to «Diy Vdoma developer Mykhaylo Fedorov, as on June, more than 179,000 people have already used the app.

«We have a policy that governs how data is used. We do not store this data. It is a technology that compares raw data with the following. We do not know who this person is, where he or she lives. There is no link to biometrics or place of registration,» he said.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, the number of checkpoints crossings before the start of quarantine totaled almost a million. Now let's imagine how many special services staff is needed to listen to a tenth or even a hundredth of the application's users, who in case of full-time work of checkpoints cross the demarcation lines.

Heroization of the propagandists who died in Donbas

On June 17, video story on «Russia 24» channel, as well as show «Evening with Vladimir Solovyov» (Russia 1) was about how the fake republics staged a magnificent ceremony in memory of the journalists Ihor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshyn who died in Donbas in 2014. The propaganda media noted that they died heroically, fulfilling their journalistic duty — to convey the truth.

Fake republics staged a magnificent ceremony in memory of the journalists Ihor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshyn

In fact, they carried out the directives of the Kremlin to discredit the Ukrainian army, spreading outright fakes. So, for example, in one of Ihor Kornelyuk's stories, an unknown person in camouflage and a mask says how the Ukrainian army supposedly slaughters the civilian population. At the same time, the story does not contain any fact. It indicates a gross violation of journalistic standards.

$ 250 million from the Pentagon to destroy civilians in Donbas

Propagandistic resource «Russia Today» published news that the United States Department of Defense will allocate 250 million dollars to Ukraine for the defense industry. For «expert comment» the resource appel to Ukrainian political scientist, whose comments often appear in various Russian and pro-Russian media.

The article contains propaganda theses about the internal conflict in Ukraine: «The United States help Ukraine, which is at war with its people», «Donbas residents do not want to live under the rule of Kyiv, they do not agree with the results of the coup d'etat, so defend the constitutional order in the country», «Any assistance in the form of supplies of weapons and technologies, as well as the exchange of experience with the American army, will lead to an increase in the number of victims, including among the civilian population of Donbas».

The idea of «Ukraine's lack of independence» is imposed on everything: «Kyiv has actually turned into an enclave controlled by Washington.»

According to the Pentagon, half of that amount, $ 125 million, will provide equipment to support ongoing training programs and operational needs.

This includes capabilities to enhance Ukraine’s defensive lethal capabilities and situational awareness in the maritime domain, air surveillance systems to monitor sovereign airspace, command and control and survivability of Ukraine’s Land and Special Operations Forces through the provision of counter-artillery radars and tactical equipment, military medical treatment and combat evacuation procedures, and cyber defense and strategic communications to counter Russian cyber offensive operations and misinformation. 

Libel on the discipline in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and accusing them of crimes against civilians

The news reports of the Kremlin's mouthpieces, which trace attempts to compromise the Ukrainian military, still remain in the spirit of the old fake about «crucified boy in Slovyansk in 2014». Here are some of them.

Russia's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, Olexandr Alimov, posted on Twitter about how «children in Donbas are being killed by shelling by Ukrainian troops,» adding a photo of a girl from Russian Ussuriysk, who was killed seven years ago. Oleg Nikolenko, the speaker of the Ukrainian mission to the UN, reported about this on Twitter.

The leaders of the terrorists reported that allegedly on June 17 this year, their video surveillance system recorded an explosion at the position of the Ukrainian 30th Mechanized Brigade, followed by the burning of the enemy's fortifications. They say that ammunition boxes were blown up in the dugout, as a result of which eight militants from the Azov regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine received mine-explosive injuries. They cited a video of the explosion as evidence.

However, it turned out that they had already distributed the same fake in July 2019. An officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel Anatoliy Shtefan (Stirlitz), drew attention to the identity of the information on his Facebook page.

On June 27, pro-Russian resources spread the news that the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine began to form special forces to investigate the crimes of the Ukrainian Armed Forces against civilians in the territories of Donbas controlled by Ukraine. But the only source to which they refer is the words of one of the leaders of the so-called «People's Militia of the DPR» Eduard Basurin, a well-known distributor of fakes.

The so-called mayor of the occupied Horlivka, Ivan Prikhodko, in an interview with the Russian EA Daily, said about the daily shelling of the city by the Ukrainian military. At the same time, it is known that the leaders of the militants themselves have repeatedly admitted shelling of the cities they occupied and the murders of civilians.

For example, on May 3, 2020, representatives of the terrorist organization «DPR» operating under the control of the Russian Federation carried out a rocket attack on the village Pavlopol of the Volnovakha district of the Donetsk region, where civilians live. The Prosecutor General's Office attached this evidence to the materials of criminal proceedings on violation of the laws and customs of war.

Another example — the leader of the militants, Olexandr Khodakovskyi admitted that he had given orders to fire on Yasynuvata, and also talked about the murders of civilians by terrorists in order to «squeeze» property.

«To thank Medvedchuk is the same as to thank Putin …»

Fakes are also observed in the Ukrainian media related to personal friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin, people’s deputy Viktor Medvedchuk. His daughter is Putin's godchild.

So, at the end of June, they attributed to Medvedchuk the release from the captivity of the so-called «DPR» a resident of Spain of Ukrainian origin Yevhenia Yepes Vinueza.

The woman visited her native Donetsk, where she has an apartment. The militants detained her and kept her in captivity for a month because she took off the flag of the so-called «DPR», which was hanged there by public utilities without her permission.

The media controlled by Medvedchuk, referring to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, to which Yevhenia gave an interview, wrote that she allegedly thanked Medvedchuk for help in the release from the captivity.

Fakes are also observed in the Ukrainian media related to personal friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin, people’s deputy Viktor Medvedchuk

The woman denied this in an interview to Ukrainian blogger Denys Kazansky. She noted that thanking Medvedchuk is the same as thanking Putin for capturing her hometown, causing arbitrariness there, and captured her.

In fact, in the publication of the Spanish newspaper the name of Medvedchuk mentioned only once (indicating that he is Putin's trusted person) — among a large list of organizations that have just been notified of the capture of a woman.

Tetyana Lebedeva, a member of the Council for Freedom of Expression and Protection of Journalists, warns people about fake news. She says that fakes most often seek to influence a person's emotions.

«If you see that the message is most likely addressed to your emotional state, there are no thoughts of experts, while there are many exclamation marks, question marks, many statements that are not substantiated by any facts, no objective reality — fears that it is manipulation should immediately arise. Excessive emotionality, let's say, is the first sign. Since the information — ordinary, journalistic, professional — meet several professional criteria and standards, and it does not allow such manipulation of the reader's emotions,» said Lebedeva.

An important point is the presence of several points of view, expert opinions in the media materials. Fakes does not have such a balance.