Russian propaganda forges crime reports to smear Ukrainian soldiers

Russian Telegram channels are circulating fabricated screenshots allegedly showing Ukrainian news reports linking a soldier of the 22nd Mechanized Brigade to brutal crimes against his mother, including abuse, an attempted stabbing, and her murder with a wooden stick.

This is fake news. Russian propaganda concocted the story by manipulating three unrelated crime reports originally published by Ukrainian outlets Dumka and Sumski Debaty.

These were separate publications from the local crime chronicle and had nothing to do with each other. None of the original articles mentioned servicemen as suspects. The falsifications were made by altering headlines in a graphic editor.

In two stories about abuse of an elderly woman and a knife attack, the word “man” was replaced with “soldier.” In a third story about a murder involving a wooden stick, “Kharkiv resident” was swapped for “soldier.”

This is part of Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting Ukrainian military. The objective is to sow distrust and provoke hostility among Ukrainians toward their own defenders by portraying them as dangerous and unhinged.

In reality, such crimes are far more common among Russian soldiers returning from the war against Ukraine. For instance, in Orenburg, a former Wagner Group mercenary murdered his friend’s mother and injured a neighbor.

According to open-source data, as of February 2025, at least 750 civilians in Russia have been harmed by so-called “SVO heroes,” with 378 fatalities.

As Ukrinform previously reported, Russian propaganda has also been spreading false claims about President Volodymyr Zelensky following the recent Washington summit.

Andriy Olenin