Russian propaganda trying to manipulate Russian language issue through fakes about children
A number of pro-war Telegram channels, including those targeting Western audiences, have spread fakes about the excessive aggression of Ukrainians and internal strife over the Russian language.
One fake claims that at Kindergarten No. 67 in Vinnytsia, a teacher "washed out the mouth with soap" of a child because of the use of the Russian language and the child allegedly developed an allergy. As proof, the propagandists shared a video allegedly taken by the child's mother. In the video, she talked about the incident and filmed the complaints she wrote to the director of the institution and the prosecutor's office, as well as the medical certificate she allegedly received from the doctor.
To create their fake, propagandists combined information about various educational institutions. For example, the child's mother allegedly indicated in her complaint the address 17 Poryka Street in Vinnytsia where Kindergarten No. 52 is located, but the real address of Kindergarten No. 67 where the incident allegedly took place is 45 Stelmakha Street.
In addition, the fake complaint was written not to the head of Kindergarten No. 67, but to the head of a completely different institution.
The mother's phone number, which she left for feedback in the header of the complaint to the prosecutor's office, is incorrect, as some digits are missing.
The certificate from the doctor was also forged. It was probably issued at the Vinnytsia Children's Dental Clinic and contains the doctor's name stamp.
Ukrinform contacted this medical worker. It turned out that she works not at the Vinnytsia Children's Dental Clinic, but at the private clinic "Dent House."
"The certificate shown in the video is not mine. In addition, I did not have a patient with the surname Kovalchuk, which is indicated in it," she added.
Another fake, recently circulated by the Russians, claimed that at the Radist summer camp in the village of Yablunytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk region, teenagers beat a boy because of his surname Rusko. To confirm this, the propagandists distributed a statement to the police, which was allegedly written by a parent of the victim boy.
The camp's management in a comment to Ukrinform denied the report about the beating of the teenager, which was spread by the Russians. It turned out that there was no child with the surname Rusko at the time of the incident. There were no complaints from parents, too.
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the language issue has become a central topic for Russian manipulations aimed at destabilizing the situation in the country through the division of society. The propagandists use children in their fakes to make them more emotional.
Earlier, Ukrinform refuted a fake about landmines on the Ukrainian-Moldovan border.
Dmytro Badrak
