Church fakes from Russian propaganda: Selling ‘prayers against mobilization’ and cursing critics of Zelensky's Victory Plan

Propagandists forged a prayer card and a priest’s post on Facebook to sow discord in Ukrainian society

Pro-Kremlin media outlets and pro-war Telegram channels have recently spread videos and photos allegedly taken in the Holy Trinity Church of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, located in the Troieshchyna district of Kyiv. In the video, an unidentified person holds a piece of paper with an alleged "prayer against mobilization" on it. The video states that such a "prayer" costs UAH 10.

This is a fake. Image editors were used for creating the fake card. The depicted ornament can be found on Russian stock Internet resources. It is called the “Russian ornament”. The propagandists replaced the domes, the symbol of the Russian Orthodox Church, with the cross of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, then printed it on a card and passed it off as a real prayer, which is also allegedly sold for money in Ukraine.

In addition, in the text of the prayer, all the letters “з” are written with the Latin letter "Z, one of the symbols of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Latin “Z” is not even used in the Old Slavonic spelling, which is used in the prayers of the Russian Orthodox Church.

It is not possible to ascertain the precise location where the propagandists' video was filmed, as there is nothing else in the frame except a hand holding a card with a “prayer” and a church altar with candles, which are typical elements found in Orthodox churches worldwide.

It is worth noting that Russian propagandists used an Instagram account as the primary source for spreading this fake, which was used to replicate another fake narrative.

According to the propagandists, this fake narrative was spread by an account with a church on its avatar, but its name was deliberately blacked out.

We found out that this avatar is now used by an account with the nickname natalyjust78, which spread the fake that a nightclub in Las Vegas was celebrating the birthday of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

This is not the only church fake recently spread by propagandists. Recently, pro-war Telegram channels reported that a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church allegedly cursed people who mock the “Victory Plan” presented by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. To confirm this, the authors of the post shared a screenshot allegedly taken from the Facebook account of priest Roman Hryshchuk.

This is a fake. There is no such post on the priest's Facebook page. As it turned out, propagandists used image editors to edit the screenshot, using another post by Roman Hryshchuk, published on October 9, before President Zelensky presented the “Victory Plan. In the original post, the priest in the video, on the contrary, gives advice to parishioners on how to behave in the event of a curse. In the video, you can see the same room as in the faked post. In addition, in the background, the icon shows a glint of light identical to the one shown in the propagandists' “screenshot.”

Ukrinform journalists have repeatedly refuted Russian fake narratives directed against the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Russian propaganda spread a fake about the Orthodox Church of Ukraine allegedly forcing people to repent for using the Russian language and about the alleged burning of an ancient temple in Ukraine that supposedly belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Russian propagandists spread fakes on religious issues to discredit the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and create an artificial split in Ukrainian society.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, Russian propaganda faked the Charlie Hebdo cover about Ukraine’s Peace Formula.

Andriy Olenin, Dmytro Badrak