Russian propaganda fakes crime reports to discredit Ukrainian Armed Forces

Russian media outlets and Telegram channels are circulating screenshots of regional news reports in the Kharkiv and Lviv regions allegedly describing crimes committed by Ukrainian servicemen against civilians. In one case, they claim a member of the Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked a passerby in Lviv; in another, that a soldier raped a 15-year-old girl at a cemetery in the Kharkiv region.

These claims are fake. Russian propaganda manipulated the headlines of two Ukrainian regional media reports using graphic editors. The original publications contained no references to Ukrainian servicemen being involved in these incidents.

In the fabricated versions, the propagandists replaced the word "man" with "service member."

There are also no mentions of servicemen in the official police statements, which were the primary sources of the original news stories.

Thus, Russian propaganda continues its campaign to discredit Ukraine's military. The aggressor's goal is to turn Ukrainian citizens against the Ukrainian Armed Forces and promote the false narrative that Ukrainian soldiers commit crimes against civilians.

In reality, such crimes are characteristic of Russian soldiers returning home from the war against Ukraine. For instance, in Orenburg, a former Wagner Group fighter killed his friend's mother and injured a neighbor.

According to open-source data, as of February 2025, at least 750 civilians in Russia have suffered at the hands of so-called "heroes of the special military operation," with 378 of them killed.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, Russian propaganda has repeatedly exploited crime reports to fabricate stories about alleged "crimes by Ukrainian soldiers."

Andriy Olenin