Russian propaganda passes off child’s death in Czechia as ‘crime’ by Ukrainian soldier in Sumy region

Russian Telegram channels shared a screenshot of a supposed news headline about an alleged criminal offense in Sumy involving a serviceman of the 47th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The posts claim that the man allegedly killed his own three-year-old son.

This claim is false. Propagandists fabricated the “news” by using information about a child’s death in Czechia as the basis. The screenshot spread by the fake accounts shows a dormitory in the Czech village of Dragomyšl. The incident and the location have no connection to Ukraine.

On March 3, a small child in a dormitory in the Czech settlement was seriously injured due to abuse and died in hospital the following day from the injuries sustained. Russian propagandists used a photo of the dormitory to illustrate their fabricated story about a supposed “crime” by a Ukrainian soldier.

It should also be noted that there are no reports of the alleged murder of a three-year-old child in Sumy either on the website of the Main Directorate of the National Police of Ukraine in the Sumy region or in Ukrainian media.

In this way, Russia continues its systematic campaign to discredit the Ukrainian Armed Forces, attempting to sow hostility between the military and civilians and portray Ukrainian defenders in a negative light.

As previously reported by Ukrinform, Russian propaganda earlier spread false claims about the alleged murder of a recruitment center serviceman and about the mobilization of Ukrainians with autism.

By Andrii Olenin