Russian propaganda spreading fake photos about queues at exchange offices in Ukraine

Russian pro-war Telegram channels have recently spread reports of queues at exchange offices amid news about a possible default in Ukraine. This is allegedly due to the fact that citizens are trying to get rid of the hryvnia, and some exchange offices seem to have run out of foreign currency.

This is a fake. Such photos have nothing to do with the current situation and especially with default. The picture in which people seem to be standing in line at an A-Bank branch to exchange currency is an old one. The license plates of the car with the letters of the region "CE" in the photo helped establish that this A-Bank branch is located in Chernivtsi. Then, searching by keywords, we found an article written by journalists from the Suspilne Chernivtsi news outlet in 2022, from which the propagandists took the photo to create their fake. It turned out that there were queues in the summer of 2022 because A-Bank helped citizens apply for payments from international organizations.

Another photo allegedly pointing to a lack of foreign currency in an exchange office is also fake and was fabricated in a graphic editor. The propagandists used the original photo from the Google Maps service in the Photos section. The picture shows an Obmin24 exchange office in Kyiv. It appeared there two years ago. The inscription "There is no foreign currency" is missing from the original photo.

Company representatives said in a comment to Ukrinform that this is a fake and there were no signs about the lack of foreign currency in their exchange offices.

The impetus for the creation of a narrative by Russian propaganda about the seemingly inevitable default in Ukraine was an article by the British newspaper The Economist, entitled "Ukraine has a month to avoid default."

In August 2022, Ukraine received a two-year loan deferment, but then no one knew how long the war would last, and as of now, the issue has not been resolved.

In turn, journalists from BBC News Ukrainian looked into this issue. Oleksandr Paraschiy, head of the analytical department at the Concorde Capital investment company, told the news outlet that the need for a new restructuring became clear at the beginning of 2023. In addition, the IMF even included it in the new $15 billion cooperation program with Ukraine, approved in March 2023, and it later began actively lobbying for a new deferment for Ukraine. According to Paraschiy, Ukraine has no intention of making payments according to the schedule that was agreed upon two years ago, and the IMF allows it not to be followed and supports Ukraine's holding of new negotiations with creditors. The article also cited the words of financial expert Serhiy Fursa. According to him, now "there is no option with a hard default".

Danylo Hetmantsev, head of the Ukrainian parliament's committee on finance, in turn, wrote in May that there was definitely no question of a full-fledged default now.

Earlier, Ukrinform refuted the fake about Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska's purchase of a new exclusive car worth EUR 4.5 million, which Russian propaganda spread on the eve of the NATO summit.

Dmytro Badrak