This morning, some Ukrainian media outlets began to report that that “a member of the negotiating group with Russia and MP Rustem Umerov said that Ukraine is preparing for a possible major offensive of the Russian army simultaneously from three directions in February 2023“. Since Rustem Umerov himself denied that he had said such a thing, and we noticed the spread of this fake as early as midnight on Russian telegram channels – We are publishing a short study on why this is fake and how Russia managed to deceive some Ukrainian media.
Thus, the primary source of disinformation was The Daily Beast.
In the US, the publication has a reputation for being extremely yellow. Another characteristic detail is that you have to pay to read an article in the US. For Ukraine and Russia, access is free (we checked it with Bitdefender VPN).
The article states that Rustem Umerov allegedly said, that “Russian troops will surround us from 240 degrees, attacking from the Black Sea, Belarus, Luhansk and Donetsk regions”. At the same time , it is strongly emphasized that he belongs to the government and is the head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine.
The author of the article is Anna Nemtsova. Despite her well-known surname, she is not related to Boris Nemtsov; his famous journalist daughter is named Zhanna. Even a cursory study of this person’ s biography reveals her likely connection to Russian special services.
After being published in The Daily Beast,the “news” with frightening headlines began to spread on Russian and pro-Russian TV channels and relevant media.
In particular, simultaneously with the Russian media, this was spread by Strana.ua , which continues to call itself Ukrainian.
Unfortunately, the Russian propagandists have been joined by such mediaoutlets as “Direct and Focus ( at the time of writing ).
At the same time ,Pryamyy TV channel also gave a quote about Wagner’s pvc for some reason.
At the same time , at the time of the publication on some Ukrainian websites, Rustem Umerov’s official page had already published a refutation several hours earlier.
We urge journalists to be more careful in checking information sources, not to spread fakes and Russian propaganda.
Update: “Focus corrected itself and promptly published a retraction. However, some other media outlets continued to spread the fake news.
P.S. The Daily Beast article also contained quotes from Oleg Zhdanov, but since they did not affect the content of the Russian dissemination, we did not investigate them.
