Russian fake news about sale of Ukrainian children and 'pizzagate'

Pro-Kremlin media outlets and Russian Telegram channels are distributing a screenshot containing a photo of a little girl with a pizza and a price tag of $3,000 from the American online marketplace Etsy.

Propagandists claim that in the language of pedophiles, "pizza is a child" and that Ukrainian children are sold abroad because of such advertisements.

The photo is fake. The screenshot being spread by Russian propagandists is just a picture of a child with a pizza, created with the help of artificial intelligence. There is not a single word in the description that the picture has anything to do with Ukraine or Ukrainian children. This is an invention of the authors of the fake.

The picture appeared on the American segment of the X social media platform on December 10, 2023.

Conspiracists from QAnon began to spread it, putting forward the theory that pedophiles have different "code words" that they use to denote the sale of children. As evidence, they provided listings on Etsy, depicting girls with pizzas. The cost of these photos, in their opinion, is abnormally high.

Fact-checkers from the Associated Press believe that this conspiracy theory is baseless and comes from another conspiracy theory called "pizzagate" that was popular in the United States during the 2016 presidential election.

The "pizzagate" theory arose following the publication on various sites and social media of articles and posts discussing the possible connection of the popular pizzeria Comet Ping Pong in Washington with a secret and influential organization of pedophiles. All of these materials were based on the correspondence of Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, John Podesta, with the owner of the pizzeria, disclosed in WikiLeaks in the midst of the election campaign. Proponents of the theory built their assumptions based on "suspicious" coincidences, photos on Instagram and other indirect signs. The "pizzagate" theory turned out to be fake, as written by fact-checkers from influential American media outlets such as The New York Times and Fox News. The D.C. Police Department called "pizzagate" a fictitious online conspiracy theory.

• The online marketplace Etsy told AP that they found no evidence to suggest that the listings posed a risk to child safety. They decided to remove the listings because they seemed to have unreasonably high prices and did not appear to be legitimate.

It is not the first time that Russian propaganda has spread fake news about Ukrainian children. In particular, false information was spread that minors and orphans were being mobilized in Ukraine, with children being forced to write complaints against their parents in schools.

Russian propaganda earlier invented the mobilization of parents at children's holidays in Vinnytsia.

Andriy Olenin