Disinformation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Russian propaganda and fake news stories have attacked Ukraine's nationhood and accused it of being a neo-Nazi state, committing genocide against Russian speakers, developing nuclear and biological weapons, and being influenced by Satanism. Russian propaganda falsely accuses NATO of controlling Ukraine and of threatening and provoking Russia. These claims have been widely rejected as untrue and crafted to justify the invasion and even to justify genocidal acts against Ukrainians. The Russian state has denied carrying out war crimes in Ukraine; Russian media and internet activists give false alibis for Russian forces, or falsely blame attacks on Ukrainian forces instead. Some of the disinformation seeks to undermine international support for Ukraine and to provoke hostility against Ukrainian refugees.

Russian disinformation has been pervasive and successful in Russia itself, due to censorship of war news and state control of most media. In the Western world, the far-right and far-left have been most accepting of Russian narratives, and Russia has collaborated with both far-right and far-left groups to spread disinformation. Ukraine's government said that Russian disinformation had influenced some in the US Trump administration. Because of its disinformation campaign and attempts to stoke division and unrest, Russian media has been restricted and its reputation has been tarnished in many European and developed countries. Russia has been more successful spreading disinformation in the Global South, particularly in the Sahel region of Africa, where Russia uses private military companies to support local regimes (see Wagner Group activities in Africa).

Russian themes

Disinformation (a lie or exaggeration meant to sway opinion) has been spread by the Russian state, state-controlled media, propagandists, and Russian web brigades using fake profiles on social media. The aim is to justify Russia's war against Ukraine, and undermine those who oppose it. Russia seeks to sow disunity among Western countries who back Ukraine; to undermine support for Ukraine among the public; to convince them that sanctions aren't working; and to cover-up or create plausible deniability for Russian war crimes. Russia tailors its propaganda to its target audience, appealing to far-right, far-left, and anti-Western sentiments.

The following are common themes in Russian propaganda and disinformation, as well as some of the common rebuttals.

Denying Ukrainian nationhood and statehood

Russian propaganda has attacked Ukrainian nationhood and national identity, portraying Ukrainians as "Little Russians" or "part of an all-Russian nation". This has been a theme in Russian imperialist and nationalist rhetoric since the seventeenth century. Russian president Vladimir Putin has long questioned the Ukrainian people's identity and the country's legitimacy. In his 2021 essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", Putin called Russians and Ukrainians "one people" and claimed there is "no historical basis" for the "idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians". Since then, Russia's official and media narrative is that Ukraine has always been Russian. In announcing the invasion, Putin repeatedly denied Ukraine's right to exist, claiming that it was created by the Russian Bolsheviks and that it never had "real statehood". In June 2025, Putin declared that "all of Ukraine is ours" because he considers Russians and Ukrainians to be "one people".

Björn Alexander Düben, professor of international affairs, writes that "Putin's historical claims do not hold up to serious academic scrutiny" and that he is "embracing a neo-imperialist account that exalts Russia's centuries-long repressive rule over Ukraine, while simultaneously presenting Russia as a victim of 'US imperialism'".

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and former Russian president, has called Ukraine part of Russia. He wrote that "Ukraine is NOT a country, but artificially collected territories" and that Ukrainian "is NOT a language" but a "mongrel dialect" of Russian. He has said that Ukraine should not exist in any form and that Russia will continue to wage war against any independent Ukrainian state.

Such denial of nationhood is said to be part of a campaign of incitement to genocide by Russian authorities. United Nations special rapporteurs have condemned the Russian occupation authorities for attempting "to erase local [Ukrainian] culture, history, and language" and to forcibly replace them with Russian language and culture.

After the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, Russian rhetoric portrayed Ukrainian governments as illegitimate, calling them the "Kyiv regime" or "junta". Putin said they were "led by a band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis", and claimed Ukraine is "under external control" by the West or the United States.

The official governmental website of Ukraine says that Ukrainians consider themselves an independent nation. A poll conducted in April 2022 by "Rating" found that the vast majority (91%) of Ukrainians (excluding the Russian-occupied territories) do not support the thesis that "Russians and Ukrainians are one people".

Russia has falsely asserted several times that foreign corporations, banks and investment funds—like BlackRock or Vanguard—control a large portion of Ukrainian soil and forbid the burial of Ukrainian bodies on that land. However, under Ukrainian law, foreign market agents like corporations and individuals are not allowed to own Ukrainian agricultural land.

Allegations of Nazism

Putin falsely claimed that the Ukrainian government were neo-Nazis and announced that one of his goals was the "de-Nazification of Ukraine". Putin's claims were repeated by Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council; many diplomats walked out in protest. These claims were repeated in Russian media to justify the war. In April 2022, Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published an article by Timofey Sergeytsev, "What Russia should do with Ukraine", where he argued that Ukraine and Ukrainian national identity must be wiped out, because he claimed most Ukrainians are at least "passive Nazis". By May, references to de-Nazifying Ukraine in Russian media began to wane, reportedly because it had not gained traction with the Russian public.

These allegations of Nazism are widely rejected as untrue and part of a Russian disinformation campaign to justify the invasion, with many pointing out that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and had relatives who were victims of the Holocaust. Some of the world's leading historians of Nazism and the Holocaust put out a statement rejecting Putin's claims, which was signed by hundreds of other historians and scholars of the subject. It says:

"We strongly reject the Russian government's ... equation of the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime to justify its unprovoked aggression. This rhetoric is factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive to the memory of millions of victims of Nazism and those who courageously fought against it."

The authors say that Ukraine "has right-wing extremists and violent xenophobic groups" like any country, but "none of this justifies the Russian aggression and the gross mischaracterization of Ukraine". The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum denounced Putin's claims, saying "once again, innocent people are being killed purely because of insane pseudo-imperial megalomania". The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem condemned Putin's abuse of Holocaust history. Ukrainian Jews likewise rejected claims of Ukraine being a neo-Nazi state.

Kremlin claims of Nazism against Ukraine are partly an attempt to drum-up support for the war among its citizens. Russian propaganda has framed it as a continuation of the Soviet Union's "Great Patriotic War" against Nazi Germany, even though Russia supports far-right groups across Europe. In the words of Miriam Berger for The Washington Post, "the rhetoric of the 'fight against fascism' resonates deeply in Russia, which suffered huge losses in the fight against Nazi Germany". Some Soviet imagery was used as part of this propaganda drive, and Ukrainian flags were replaced with Victory Banners in some occupied towns.

Experts on disinformation say that Russia's portrayal of Ukrainians as Nazis helps them justify Russian war crimes; Russia's UN representative justified the Hroza missile attack in this way. Historian Timothy Snyder said the Russian regime calls Ukrainians "Nazis" to justify genocidal acts against them. He said pro-war Russians use "Nazi" to mean "a Ukrainian who refuses to be Russian". Russian neo-fascist Aleksandr Dugin proposed to simply "identify Ukrainian Nazism with Russophobia". Dugin argued that Russia should be the only country allowed to define Ukrainian Nazism and Russophobia, in the same way that Jews have what he calls a "monopoly" on the definition of antisemitism.

Article 16 of the Constitution of Ukraine states: "To ensure ecological safety and to maintain the ecological balance on the territory of Ukraine, to overcome the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe - a catastrophe of global scale, and to preserve the gene pool of the Ukrainian people, is the duty of the State". A number of pro-Russian online accounts have used this sentence to claim it proved Ukrainians are "fascists" and "Nazis". In reality, this article of the Constitution only affirms the protection for people who faced adverse health and ecological impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Article 24 of the Constitution states that "There shall be no privileges or restrictions based on race, colour of skin, political, religious and other beliefs, sex, ethnic and social origin, property status, place of residence, linguistic or other characteristics". Ukraine has publicly condemned "all forms of Nazism, neo-Nazism, racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance."

Ukrainian officials respond that Russia's own actions in Ukraine are like those of Nazi Germany, and some commentators, including Snyder, have likened Putin's Russia to a fascist state (see Ruscism). Many Russian units who took part in the invasion are linked to neo-Nazism themselves, including the Rusich Group and Kremlin-sponsored Wagner Group. Other openly neo-Nazi groups have been involved in recruiting, training and fighting on the Russian side, such as the Russian Imperial Legion, AAST and Atomwaffen Division Russland. Russian far-right groups also played a major role among the Russian proxy forces in Donbas.

Like many countries, Ukraine has a far-right fringe, such as Right Sector and Svoboda. Analysts generally agree that the Russian government greatly exaggerates far-right influence in Ukraine, as there is no widespread support for far-right ideology in the government, military, or electorate. In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, a coalition of far-right parties including Right Sector received only 2% of votes and did not win any seats. Ukraine's Azov Brigade began as a far-right volunteer militia. It was a focus of Kremlin propaganda, which falsely claimed they were "anti-Russian neo-Nazis persecuting ethnic Russians". Azov has been mentioned on Russian TV more often than Putin's ruling United Russia party. By the time of the invasion, the brigade had been largely de-politicized. A 2022 Counter Extremism Project report concluded that the Azov Brigade can no longer be defined as neo-Nazi.

Donbas genocide allegation

In his announcement of the invasion, Putin baselessly claimed that Ukraine was carrying out genocide against Russian Ukrainians in the Donbas region. He said the purpose of Russia's "military operation" was to "protect the people" of the Russian-controlled breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Putin claimed they had been facing "genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime" for eight years. There is no evidence for Putin's claims of genocide, and they have been widely rejected as a pretext for invasion. The European Commission called the allegations "Russian disinformation". Over 300 scholars on genocide issued a statement rejecting Russia's abuse of the term "genocide" to "justify its own violence". Ukraine brought a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to challenge Russia's claim. The ICJ said it had not seen any evidence of genocide by Ukraine.

A claim by pro-Kremlin commentators is that "Ukraine killed 14,000 ethnic Russian civilians" in the Donbas. However, this is the total number of people killed by all sides in the Donbas War as a whole. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, about 14,300 people were killed in the Donbas War, both soldiers and civilians. Of these, 6,500 were Russian proxy forces, 4,400 were Ukrainian forces, and 3,404 were civilians on both sides of the frontline. The vast majority of civilian deaths were in the first year, and the death rate in the Donbas War was actually falling before the 2022 Russian invasion: in 2019 there were 27 conflict-related civilian deaths, in 2020 there were 26 deaths, and in 2021 there were 25 deaths, over half of them from mines and unexploded ordnance.

By comparison, after Russia's full-scale invasion, 4,163 civilians were killed in March 2022, meaning that more civilians died in that one month alone than in the entire eight years of the Donbas War. Since the invasion, Russian state-controlled media and pro-Kremlin Telegram channels falsely accused Ukrainian troops of attacking civilian targets in Mariupol and bombing Ukrainian cities. According to Russian website Bumaga, an anonymous former employee of Yevgeny Prigozhin's media company "Patriot" said that most of their reports about "victims of Ukrainian Armed Forces" in Donbas were staged.

A snippet of a speech by former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko was taken out of context to support claims that Ukraine was abusing civilians in the Donbas. Poroshenko appeared to claim that he will force children in the Donbas to sleep in cellars and that he will prevent Donbas residents from accessing public services. In his full speech, Poroshenko does not claim that Ukraine will mistreat Donbas residents, but rather that the occupation of Donbas by pro-Russian separatists is causing suffering for local residents. Therefore, by comparing their appalling living conditions with those of Ukrainian citizens, he argues that Ukraine could win the war in Donbas simply due to popular discontent on the other side.

Allegations of NATO provocation

Russian propaganda often claims that NATO and its "eastward expansion" provoked the invasion and that Russia had to invade Ukraine in self-defense. In his two speeches just before the invasion, Putin said that Ukraine joining NATO would be a threat, and warned that NATO might use Ukraine to launch a surprise attack on Russia. He falsely claimed that NATO was building up its forces and military infrastructure in Ukraine, and that the Ukrainian military was under NATO control. Russian state media falsely claimed that thousands of NATO soldiers had been killed in the invasion.

Although it seeks to join, Ukraine is not a member of NATO; a collective security alliance of 32 member states, similar to the Russian-led CSTO. In 1999, Russia signed the Charter for European Security, affirming the right of each state to choose its security arrangements and to join alliances if they wish. When Russia occupied Crimea and invaded the Donbas in 2014, Ukraine was officially a neutral country and was not seeking NATO membership. In December 2014, Ukraine's parliament voted to end this neutral status in response to Russia's aggression, and Ukraine only applied to join NATO in response to the 2022 invasion. Steven Pifer thus argues that Russia's own aggressive actions have done the most to push Ukraine towards NATO. When Russia invaded in 2022, Ukraine was a long way from membership. Members of the alliance have been wary of letting Ukraine join, partly due to Putin's warnings.

Putin claimed that NATO broke a promise not to let any Eastern European countries join. This unwritten promise was allegedly made by American and German diplomats to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, but the diplomats and NATO denied ever making any formal proposal. Such a promise was never included in any treaty, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. From then until the Russian invasion, 14 Eastern European countries willingly joined NATO. Political scientist Filip Kostelka says many of these countries sought NATO membership "to protect themselves from the Russian threat. They did not need to be pushed". The last time a country bordering Russia had joined NATO prior to the invasion was in 2004.

Peter Dickinson of the Atlantic Council suggested the real reason Putin opposes NATO is not because he believes it is a threat, but because it "prevents him from bullying Russia's neighbors". Tom Casier writes that Russia's annexation of southeastern Ukraine reveals that the real motive for the invasion is to create a "Greater Russia".

Shortly before his death in a plane crash, Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin accused the Russian military leadership of lying about NATO aggression to justify the invasion. Prigozhin was a close ally of Putin and his Wagner Group played an important role in the invasion.

An article published by the Institute for the Study of War concluded:

"Putin didn't invade Ukraine in 2022 because he feared NATO. He invaded because he believed that NATO was weak, that his efforts to regain control of Ukraine by other means had failed, and that installing a pro-Russian government in Kyiv would be safe and easy. His aim was not to defend Russia against some non-existent threat but rather to expand Russia's power, eradicate Ukraine's statehood, and destroy NATO, goals he still pursues".

NATO proxy war allegation

The Russian government has accused NATO of waging a "proxy war" against Russia, because its members have sent military aid to Ukraine after the beginning of the invasion. Russian state media falsely claimed that some Ukrainian military units fighting the invasion were under NATO command. NATO says it is not at war with Russia, but supports Ukraine's "right to self-defense, as enshrined in the UN Charter". Lawrence Freedman wrote that calling Ukraine a NATO "proxy" wrongly implied that "Ukrainians are only fighting because NATO put them up to it, rather than because of the more obvious reason that they have been subjected to a vicious invasion". He said that any weakening of Russia caused by the war would result from "Moscow's folly ...not NATO's intent". Geraint Hughes said that calling Ukraine NATO's "proxy" insults and belittles Ukrainians, denies their autonomy and implies they do not really have the will to defend their country.

Countering claims of NATO waging a proxy war, it is pointed out that NATO states have actually been slow in sending weaponry to Ukraine, especially advanced weapons, and they prevented Ukraine from firing those weapons into Russia. NATO refused to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, and the US told Ukraine to stop attacking refineries and early-warning radars in Russia.

Alleged assassination and sabotage attempts

On 18 February 2022, the Luhansk People's Republic showed a video purportedly showing removal of a car full of explosives prepared to blow up a train full of women and children evacuating to Russia. The video's metadata showed that it had been recorded on 12 June 2019.

The breakaway Donetsk People's Republic also released a video on 18 February 2022 that claimed to show Poles trying to blow up a chlorine tank. The video was further distributed by Russian media. The video's metadata showed that it was created on 8 February 2022, and included different pieces of audio or video, including a 2010 YouTube video from a military firing range in Finland. Ukrainian intelligence attributed responsibility for the video to the Russian intelligence service GRU.

According to Bellingcat, a supposed bombing of a "separatist police chief" by a "Ukrainian spy", broadcast on Russian state television, showed visual evidence of the bombing of an old "green army vehicle". The old car's registration plate was that of the separatist police chief, but the same licence plate was also seen on a different, new SUV.

On 22 February 2022, the Russian people's militias in Ukraine accused Ukraine of a "terrorist attack" that killed three civilians in a car on the Donetsk-Gorlovka highway. France 24 described the incident as a false flag attempt with corpses likely coming from a morgue to set up the scene.

Ukrainian biological and radiological weapons

Biological weapons labs

In March 2022, Russia alleged that Ukraine was developing biological weapons in a network of labs linked to the US. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China and Chinese state media amplified Russian claims. QAnon promoters also echo disinformation. BBC Reality Check found no evidence supporting the claims. The United Nations and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists also refuted this. Russian biologists in and outside of Russia have debunked the claims, calling the allegations "transparently false".

According to researcher Adam Rawnsley, the Kremlin has a history of discrediting ordinary biology labs in former Soviet republics, and previously spread conspiracy theories about Georgia and Kazakhstan similar to those deployed against Ukraine.

Birds as bio-weapons

Prior to March 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defence made unsubstantiated accusations that the United States was manufacturing bio-weapons in Ukraine. In March the Ministry followed up with another conspiracy theory: the US was training birds to spread disease in Ukraine among Russian citizens, according to Major General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Ministry of Russian state-controlled media. He mentioned specific details, including a strain of influenza with 50% mortality, and Newcastle disease. Media reports included maps, documents, and photos of birds with American military insignia, and claimed that infected birds had been captured alive in eastern Ukraine.

A U.S. State Department spokesman laughed these claims off and called them "outright lies", "total nonsense", "absurd", "laughable" and "propaganda". CIA Director William Burns told the U.S.Senate that Russia made these claims to prepare the terrain for a biological or chemical attack against Ukraine, which they would then blame on the United States and Ukraine.

Combat mosquitoes

On 28 October 2022 Vasily Nebenzya, Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations, accused Ukraine of using drones with "combat mosquitoes" which spread "dangerous viruses".

Ukrainian plans to use a dirty bomb

In March 2022, Russian state-controlled news agencies claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine was developing a plutonium-based dirty bomb nuclear weapon at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

In a series of calls to foreign defence officials made in October 2022, Russian Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu similarly claimed that Ukraine was preparing a "provocation" involving the use of a dirty bomb. The Institute for the Study of War suggested a desire to slow or suspend foreign aid to Ukraine as a possible motive for the allegations. The foreign ministries of France, the United Kingdom and the United States rejected "Russia's transparently false allegations". In a briefing, the Russian Ministry of Defence used photos of the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station, the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant, the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and a photo from a 2010 presentation by the Slovenian Radioactive Waste Management Agency as "evidence" for its claims.

Denial of Russian war crimes

During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity were recorded and extensively documented, including attacks on civilians and energy-related infrastructure, wilful killings, unlawful confinement, torture, rape, and unlawful deportations of children. Russian officials denied the war crimes perpetrated by Russian forces. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov called the Bucha massacre a "fake attack" against Russia, claiming it was staged. He said that Russian forces had left Bucha on 30 March while evidence of killings had emerged, according to him, four days later.

In March 2022, Facebook removed official Russian posts claiming that the Mariupol hospital airstrike was a hoax, for breaking their rules against denying violent events. FakeReporter, an Israeli watchdog group, found that the posts were still present on several Russian ministry social media accounts.

On 4 April at the United Nations, Russian representative Vasily Nebenzya said that the bodies in the videos were not there when Russian forces withdrew from Bucha. This was contradicted by satellite images showing that the bodies were there as early as 19 March; the position of the corpses in the satellite images matches the smartphone photos taken in early April.

The Russian Defence Ministry's Telegram channel said Russian forces did not target civilians during the battle. According to them, a massacre could not have been covered up by the Russian military, and the mass grave in the city was filled with victims of Ukrainian airstrikes. The Ministry said it had analyzed a video purporting to show the bodies of dead civilians in Bucha, and the corpses were moving. The BBC's Moscow office investigated this claim and concluded there was no evidence the video had been staged. Russia also released a video that, according to the Kremlin, showed a corpse supposedly moving, although this was quickly deemed false after investigations by fact-checking websites determined that it was a corpse reflected in the rearview mirror of a car. Adrien Bocquet, a French journalist who applied for Russian citizenship and was given awards by the Kremlin, allegedly witnessed Ukrainian forces staging the massacre. Many of his assertions were proven false by fact-checkers, who showed that he even had photoshopped pictures to support his representation of events, that he had changed his story several times, and that the dates of his trip didn't match his narrative.

Another attempt to depict the massacre as fake aired on the Russian state television channel Russia-24, using a video that the channel claimed showed Ukrainians arranging mannequins in order to "stage" the Bucha massacre. The footage was quickly identified as coming from a television set filmed in Saint Petersburg. Workers for the television show confirmed that the video was from a Russian television show. Similarly, a video showing Ukrainian soldiers pulling dead bodies with cables in Bucha was widely shared by pro-Russian social media, supposedly to prove that the scene was staged. The provenance of the video is the Associated Press; its report explains that the use of cables was due to concern of the dead bodies being possibly booby-trapped. Videos showing Ukrainian forces searching for explosives under the corpses, falsely claiming they were placing the bodies to fake the massacre, were also shared in social media. Russian officials also blamed Ukrainian forces for the Mariupol theatre airstrike, though independent sources confirmed that Russia was responsible.

In November 2022, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that the Russian military was attacking civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. According to Peskov, the Russian army only attacked targets directly or indirectly connected to military potential. In January 2023, the Russian Ministry of Defence confirmed their responsibility for the Dnipro residential building airstrike, which killed over 40 civilians. But Peskov said that Russian forces never attack residential buildings and the residential building probably collapsed because of a Ukrainian air defence counterattack.

In December 2022, Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison for his statements about the killings in Bucha on charges of "spreading false information" about the armed forces. Yashin was tried over a YouTube video released in April 2022 in which he discussed the discovery of murdered Ukrainian civilians in the suburban town of Bucha, near Kyiv. In February 2023, Russian journalist Maria Ponomarenko was sentenced to six years in prison for publishing information about the Mariupol theatre airstrike.

Alleged ban on Russian language and Orthodox Christianity

The law of Ukraine "On Protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the State language" approved on 25 April 2019, gives priority to the Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration, media, education, science, culture, advertising, services. However, it does not regulate private communication nor ban the use of Russian language in the country, contrary to what some online claims created by Russia have asserted. Russian remains a widely used language in Ukraine in pop culture and in informal and business communication.

On 20 August 2024, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine banned the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine by adopting the Law of Ukraine "On the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Field of Activities of Religious Organizations". Ukrainian religious organizations affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church will be banned 9 months from the moment the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolicy and Freedom of Conscience issues the order, if this religious organization does not sever relations with the Russian Orthodox Church in accordance with Orthodox canon law. This prohibition did not extend to Eastern Orthodoxy in general, nor did encourage to set fire to Orthodox churches, contrary to what some online claims asserted.

Other Russian claims

Start of the war

Many people outside Ukraine, including politicians and commentators, regard 24 February 2022 as the start of Russia's war with Ukraine. According to political scientist Andreas Umland and co-authors, this approach diminishes the significance of the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and its military operation in the Donbas. This line of argument helps Russian propaganda present a justification for its aggression. Umland regards 20 February 2014 as the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. On that day, a column of Russian armored vehicles departed Sevastopol’s Cossack Bay, and the same date is engraved on the Russian Crimea campaign medal. Most researchers, however, prefer 27 February 2014, when Russian forces occupied the Crimean parliament.

Shortly before the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022, the Russian government denied that such an invasion would take place.

On 7 September 2022, at the Eastern Economic Forum, Putin claimed that Russia did not "start" any military operations, but was only trying to end those that started in 2014, after a "coup d’état in Ukraine". Conversely, Russia's annexation of Crimea in February 2014 is regarded as the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Before Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the intensity of the hostilities in the Donbas had been steadily declining since the signing of the Minsk agreements in February 2015.

Ukrainian Satanism and black magic

In May 2022, Russian state media claimed that Ukraine was using black magic to fend off the Russian military. RIA Novosti said that evidence of black magic had been found in an eastern Ukrainian village; according to their report, Ukrainian soldiers had allegedly consecrated their weapons "with blood magick" at a location with a "satanic seal".

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council and also a former Russian president and prime minister, described the invasion as a sacred war against Satan. Vladimir Solovyov, a presenter on state-owned channel Russia-1, also called the invasion a "holy war" against "Satanists" and said Russia is up against fifty countries "united by Satanism".

Assistant secretary of Russia's Security Council Aleksey Pavlov called for the "de-Satanisation" of Ukraine in October 2022, claiming that the country had turned into a "totalitarian hypersect". In an article for the Russian state-owned Argumenty i Fakty newspaper, he identified the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Jewish movement as one of the "hundreds of neo-pagan cults" operating in Ukraine. Russia's chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, wrote a letter to Russian authorities, asking them to condemn Pavlov's comments, which he described as "a new variety of old blood libels". About 70% of Ukrainians are religious, and half of those attend religious services.

False flag fakes

In March 2022, videos were discovered purporting to show Ukrainian-produced disinformation about missile strikes inside Ukraine which were then "debunked" as some other event outside Ukraine. However, this may be the first case of a disinformation false-flag operation, as the original, supposedly "Ukraine-produced" disinformation was never disseminated by anyone, and was in fact preventive disinformation created specifically to be debunked and cause confusion and mitigate the impact on the Russian public of real footage of Russian strikes within Ukraine that may get past Russian-controlled media. According to Patrick Warren, head of Clemson's Media Forensics Hub, "It's like Russians actually pretending to be Ukrainians spreading disinformation. ... The reason that it's so effective is because you don't actually have to convince someone that it's true. It's sufficient to make people uncertain as to what they should trust."

The Olenivka prison massacre, described by most independent experts as a Russian-orchestrated sabotage, has been reported by Russian media as a missile attack by Ukraine. While the exact cause of the incident has still not been conclusively confirmed, most experts conclude the Russian version highly improbable.

False claims about President Zelenskyy

The Russian state media agency TASS claimed that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy fled Kyiv following the invasion and also that he had surrendered. Zelenskyy used social media to post statements, videos and photos to counter the Russian disinformation.

Russian state-owned television channel Russia-1 spread false claims that Zelenskyy fled Ukraine following the 10 October 2022 missile strikes.

On social media, it has been falsely claimed through digitally altered videos or footage cuts that president Zelenskyy (and sometimes other European leaders) are addicted to narcotics like cocaine.

Boris Johnson preventing peace

A Russian claim is that British prime minister Boris Johnson was to blame for the failure of the Istanbul peace negotiations in March-April 2022, by pressuring Ukrainian diplomats not to sign a peace agreement. The claim is based on a May 2022 article in Ukrainska Pravda. According to the article, Johnson arrived in Kyiv on 9 April and told the Ukrainians that Putin "should be pressured, not negotiated with" and that the UK was not willing to sign an agreement with Russia.

This claim that Johnson scuppered a peace agreement was denied by Ukrainian president Zelenskyy and by Ukrainian negotiator Davyd Arakhamia. They clarified that no agreement was about to be signed, and that the negotiations had already failed due to disagreement on key issues, before Johnson even arrived in Kyiv. Furthermore, negotiations continued after Johnson's visit. On 16 April 2022, Zelenskyy tried to break the deadlock by proposing two separate treaties: an agreement on security guarantees "from those who are prepared to give such security guarantees", and a bilateral agreement between Ukraine and Russia.

In an article for Foreign Affairs, political scientists Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko studied several of the draft agreements, interviewed participants in the talks, and reviewed statements by Ukrainian and Russian officials. They concluded that negotiations failed because of several things: the failure to focus on reaching a ceasefire first of all; disagreement between Russia and Ukraine over key issues (outlined here); the unwillingness of Ukraine's Western partners to give absolute security guarantees; the uncovering of Russian atrocities against civilians such as the Bucha massacre in early April; and Ukraine's confidence in a military solution after Russia's retreat from the north. Some on the Ukrainian side did not believe Russia was negotiating in good faith, and did not trust Russia to uphold an agreement.

Simon Shuster, a journalist who wrote a biography of Zelenskyy, said:

"Ukraine was left to rely on Russia's word. After Bucha, that seemed like a bad idea. Plus Ukraine had just achieved a big military victory, and Zelenskyy wanted to keep that momentum going on the battlefield. Boris encouraged him. But he was one relatively minor factor among many".

Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev later claimed that "Boris Johnson sabotaged the ready-to-be-signed Russia-Ukraine peace deal after he received a £1 million donation from a military drone manufacturer". This claim was repeated by Russian state media. However, this donation was made in November 2022, when Johnson was no longer prime minister.

Anti-refugee sentiments

Russian disinformation has also attempted to promote anti-refugee sentiments in Poland and other countries with an influx of mostly Ukrainian refugees from the war. Social media accounts with ties to Russia have promoted stories of refugees committing crimes or being unfairly privileged, or about locals discriminating against refugees (in particular, against black and non-Ukrainian refugees). Such disinformation is intended to weaken international support for Ukraine.

Crucified bodies

Hoaxes about crucified civilians and soldiers by the Ukrainian military were deliberately spread by the Kremlin. One story claimed that Ukrainian soldiers crucified a three-year-old boy at "Lenin Square" in Sloviansk. Investigative journalists from the Russian news outlets Novaya Gazeta and TV Rain, who visited Sloviansk, did not find any evidence to support the allegations. They also noted the absence of audio or video footage of the incident, which was unusual since actions of the Ukrainian army in the city were otherwise well documented at the time. BBC News pointed out that there is no "Lenin Square" in Sloviansk, although there is an "October Revolution Square". Some Russian journalists condemned the fabrication of the story.

A video showing a group of people claiming to be members of the Azov Brigade setting a crucified body of a supposed separatist soldier on fire also spread on social media. Representatives of the brigade themselves deny any connection to the video, arguing that the uniforms of the people shown in the video differ from those of Azov Brigade fighters, since the shoulder insignia is much larger than it should be, and the weapon appears to be pneumatic. They also point out that the person nailed to the cross does not scream while lifting the cross, that the persons are speaking broken Ukrainian and the video stops shortly after the cross is set on fire, so it is unknown whether the person died. It is noteworthy that the video presents the people in military uniform as fighters of the Azov Brigade. However, by 2014 Azov had been reorganized and expanded into a regiment within the National Guard, making it unlikely that members of the unit would be unaware of the change. Another video of two people being hanged was received with skepticism, since the video footage shows one of the person's abdomen moving forward while the weight of the body is not concentrated on the neck, suggesting the actors wear special equipment that is used while climbing cliffs. They also draw attention to the fact that the persons involved in the "hanging" ensure that the bodies do not rotate and their backs do not appear during the video.

"Grandmother with red flag"

A video showing an elderly woman holding the Soviet national flag to greet the Ukrainian military has been widely spread in Runet since March 2022. The grandmother with a red flag was turned into an iconic image by Russian propaganda. Allegedly, it represents the desire of "ordinary Ukrainians" to reunite with their "Russian brothers".

Anna Ivanivna, the subject of the "grandmother with red flag" video, explained that she mistook the Ukrainian military for Russian invaders and she wanted to "placate" them with a Soviet flag so they would not destroy the village. She now regrets it and feels like a "traitor". Her house near Kharkiv was destroyed by the Russian army, and she and her husband have been evacuated. She cursed the Russian army which she deemed was responsible for shelling her house. The Ukrainian military appealed to the public to not chastise Anna Ivanivna, who was a victim herself.

"French mercenaries" killed in Kharkiv

On 16 January 2024, Russia carried out a missile strike on a multi-storey building in Kharkiv, claiming it had killed a dozen "French mercenaries". Local authorities said that 17 civilians were injured and that there was no military target in the building. Russian media even published a list of 13 French men ostensibly killed in the attack. French network Radio France Internationale (RFI) contacted two people on the list, Alexis Drion and Béranger Minaud, volunteers of the International Legion of Ukraine who were both in France during this attack on Kharkiv, and made an interview with them, confirming they never died and that the story is Russian propaganda. RFI assumes this was tied to the French announcement of a delivery of 40 SCALP missiles to the Ukrainian Army.

Russian claims about Ukrainian civilians

• "Russian soldiers will be welcomed as heroes by civilians for liberating them in Ukraine"
  • Ukrainians confront Russian tanks with bare hands
  • Ukrainians jubilant as Ukraine retakes Kherson
• "No strikes are being made on civilian infrastructure" - In February 2022 Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov "Russian armed forces do not attack civilian objects on the territory of Ukraine" - June 2023 Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov
  • Russia's full-scale aggression has caused $137.8 billion damage to Ukraine's infrastructure in a year.
• "Civilians are not being targeted"
  • The United Nations estimated that as of 24 July, the war had killed or injured more than 12,000 civilians
  • Civilians are tortured and killed
  • Civilians suffer wilful killings, attacks, unlawful confinement, torture, rape and sexual violence, as well as forcible transfer and deportation of children - Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, to the General Assembly
  • At least 10,000 killed civilians confirmed by the UN since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion - November 2023
• The Kremlin claimed "they do not intend to impose anything by force."
  • Civilians who refuse Russian passports denied medical facilities
  • Civilians without passports threatened with deportation
• "Ukrainian citizens can decide on their future" - President Putin 12 June 2021

Claims of Wikipedia publishing false information

Amongst Russia's attempts to control the free press and present their own views are attacks on Wikipedia, which has been on a government registry of prohibited websites for over 10 years.

In May 2022, the Wikimedia Foundation was fined 5 million rubles for articles about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia claimed to have uncovered 16.6 million messages spreading "fakes" about the invasion on platforms including Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation appealed the ruling in June, stating the "information at issue is fact-based and verified by volunteers who continuously edit and improve articles on the site; its removal would therefore constitute a violation of people's rights to free expression and access to knowledge."

In November 2022, a Russian court fined the Wikimedia Foundation 2 million rubles for not deleting "false" information in seven articles about the "special military operation", including the Bucha massacre and the Mariupol theatre airstrike.

In February 2023, a Russian court imposed a fine of 2 million rubles on the Wikimedia Foundation for failing to remove "misinformation" about the Russian military. In April 2023, another fine of 800,000 rubles was imposed on the Wikimedia Foundation for not removing materials about Russian rock band Psiheya, with another fine of 2 million rubles being imposed in relation to other articles such as the Russian language version of Russian occupation of Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

Support for Hamas

On 8 October 2023, a day after the 7 October attacks, a video supposedly of Hamas thanking Ukraine for supplying them with weapons was shared by an X account linked to the Wagner Group. It was viewed over 300,000 times and shared by American far-right accounts. The next day, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev tweeted, "Well, NATO buddies, you've really got it, haven't you? The weapons handed to the Nazi regime in Ukraine are now being actively used against Israel." On 10 October, another video was released falsely claiming to be made by the BBC and purported to quote the investigative journalism website Bellingcat to confirm the sale of weapons between Ukraine and Hamas. Both the BBC and Bellingcat confirmed that the video was a fake and the claim was false.

Organ harvesting and pedophilia

In April 2022, Canada's Communications Security Establishment said there was a coordinated effort by Russia to promote false reports about Ukraine harvesting organs from dead soldiers, women and children.

In May 2023, RT aired a documentary titled Tanks for Kidneys, which promotes false claims that Ukraine has been selling organs since 2014, including from children in orphanages and Ukrainian soldiers.

In 2025, false news reports gained traction online and fuelled conspiracy theories that Russian airstrikes in Ukraine usually target pedophile and child trafficking schemes.

Involvement in the Crocus City Hall attack

In March 2024, four Tajik ISIS–K gunmen launched an attack on a concert hall in Krasnogorsk, Russia, with rifles and incendiaries, killing 145. Ukrainian officials described Russian claims that the perpetrators of the Crocus City Hall attack tried to escape to Ukraine as "very doubtful and primitive" disinformation, recalling that the border is heavily guarded by soldiers and drones, mined in many areas, and constantly shelled from both sides. Latvia-based Russian news outlet Meduza has reported that pro-government and state-funded media in Russia have been instructed by the Russian government to highlight possible "traces" of Ukrainian involvement in the attack.

On the evening of the attack, Russian television channel NTV broadcast a doctored video using audio deepfaking, purporting to show Oleksiy Danilov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, confirming Ukrainian involvement in the attack, supposedly saying, "It's fun in Moscow today, I think it's very fun. I would like to believe that we will arrange such fun for them more often." The deepfake was created by patching together previous news streams of the Ukrainian 1+1 channel.

In late March 2024, more than 50% of Russians believed that Ukraine was responsible for the terrorist attack, while 27% said Islamic State was responsible and 6% blamed the so-called "collective West", according to a survey conducted by OpenMinds. The Islamic State was blamed most often by young people aged 18–30 who opposed the war in Ukraine. Russia's Investigative Committee investigation completed in 2025 indicated no Ukrainian involvement, contrary to the previous public statements from the authorities.

Attack on Putin's residence

In December 2025, Putin made a claim to US president Donald Trump that Ukraine had attacked Putin's personal residence, no evidence was found for the alleged attack, and the CIA assessed Ukraine were not targeting a residence used by Putin.

Olympics disinformation campaign

In February 2026, BBC Verify said that a major Russian disinformation operation was using the 2026 Winter Olympics to paint Ukrainian fans and athletes in a bad light using fake news stories, with the goal of undermining Western support for Ukraine.

False reports of military success

In October 2025, TVP World said Russian state media, including TASS, published statements by the Russian Defense Ministry falsely claiming Russian troops had “successfully landed“ on Karantynnyi Island in Kherson, ”taken control of key facilities” and “repelled all counterattacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.“ The reports were later deleted, and the Southern Ukraine Defense said on social media that Russian state media were spreading fabricated claims about capturing Kherson. According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russia deliberately uses false reports as part of cognitive warfare.

Meduza said in May 2026 that a compilation of pro-Kremlin pundit Boris Rozhin repeatedly stating the village of Mala Tokmachka being ″nearly cleared″ had become the most popular military meme in 2026, becoming a symbol of the lies of Russian military officials and bloggers. The village's name has also come to be associated with the gap between Russia's military ambitions and its actual capabilities.

Russian use of AI for propaganda

Fake videos made with generative AI were created as part of a propaganda war against Ukraine and shared in social media. These included depictions of children in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, fake ads targeting children encouraging them to denounce critics of the Ukrainian government, or fictitious statements by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy using deepfake technology about the country's surrender, among others.

A number of fabricated CNN headlines and stories went viral on social media, including of a faked image of CNN reporting that Steven Seagal had been seen alongside the Russian military, false tweets claiming that a CNN journalist had been killed in Ukraine, a CNN lower third that was digitally altered to include a claim that Putin had issued a statement warning India not to interfere in the conflict, and another that was altered to claim that Putin planned to delay the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine until "Biden delivers weapons to Ukraine for Russia to capture", as well as a fabricated CNN tweet supposedly reporting on a figure referred to as "the Kharkiv Kid finder" alongside an image that actually portrayed the YouTuber Vaush, who lives in the US and was not in Kharkiv at the time.

Other Western stations, including the BBC, DW and Euronews, have seen similar fakes distributed.

Claims of "mass exodus" from Kyiv

In August and September 2026, many social media accounts spread disinformation that Kyiv residents were fleeing the capital en masse, accompanied by videos and photographs of crowds and traffic. These images and videos were from immediately after the 2022 invasion, from outside Ukraine, or showed normal traffic jams and rush-hour traffic in Kyiv.