Russian propaganda outlets and pro-Kremlin Telegram channels amplified their disinformation and propaganda targeting Ukraine, its leaders, its policies, and its allies in 2024, in an ongoing campaign to weaken the country and support for fighting off Russia’s full-on invasion.
Journalists from the fact-checking project Provereno.Media compiled a list of the most widespread and most notable examples. The independent Russian Meduza outlet has translated the feature originally published by iStories.
Claim: Zelensky spent Western military aid on Goebbels’s villa, Hitler’s car, and luxury vehicles
Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Western allies have provided Ukraine with aid totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. Russian propagandists have repeatedly accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his inner circle of embezzling the funds. This year, they claimed that by the end of 2023, Zelensky had allegedly purchased a mansion in Britain from King Charles III, a winery in Italy from British singer, Sting, the former villa of Joseph Goebbels near Berlin, a casino in Northern Cyprus, and a hotel in Courchevel, France.
The story of Zelensky’s alleged illicit enrichment was spread through Telegram channels and also by major Russian news outlets, including Russia Today and RBC. The widespread circulation of these fake stories beyond the Z-community was supplemented by a deliberate “legitimization” strategy: fabricated “evidence” was introduced either through sites posing as reputable Western media or through fake web pages for properties Zelensky supposedly purchased. In some instances, the stories were made even more convincing with claims that the transactions were conducted via Film Heritage Inc., a Belize-based offshore company owned by the Zelensky family and widely publicized in 2019 through OCCRP’s Pandora Papers investigation.
How Russian propaganda builds ‘alternative realities’
Fabricated media “sources” cited in Russian news reports and Telegram channels were registered shortly before the claims were published. Much of the so-called photo evidence was AI-generated. In some cases, the file names of photos cited by English-language fake news sites matched the titles of articles published on the Russian newspaper Gazeta.ru.
Propagandists claimed wife of the Ukrainian president, Olena Zelenska, paid 4.5 million euros ($4.6 million) on a Bugatti during a visit to France. The same methods were used to legitimize the story, including fake transaction documents and an AI video featuring a “Bugatti dealer employee” discussing the sale of the vehicle. They also claimed that Zelensky himself had bought a car that once belonged to Hitler, using fabricated evidence.
Other high-ranking Ukrainian officials have also been targeted. Russian channels reported that Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, paid $27 million to secure a spot on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential People. They cited a fake BBC video based on a non-existent Bellingcat investigation, with the video first appearing on a channel called “Putin on Telegram.”
Claim: Trump appeared on Ukraine’s ‘enemies’ database
Russian propaganda took an active interest in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, creating and amplifying fake stories about Democratic candidate Kamala Harris from U.S. right-wing bloggers. After Trump’s victory, pro-Kremlin channels unleashed a wave of fake reports about how Ukrainians were responding to the election’s outcome. Unlike his opponent, Trump hadn’t promised to support Kyiv “for as long as it takes,” which supposedly meant his return to the White House outraged Ukrainians. Z-channels began to feature fake announcements calling for donations to assassinate Trump, as well as doctored videos of a Ukrainian priest allegedly referring to Trump as the “Antichrist” and the “devil.”
These outlets paid particular attention to the alleged reaction of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.They shared a video allegedly showing Azov fighters burning Trump’s books in protest against his plan to end the war. The footage appears to have been staged, with no open-source evidence of any such a book burning. On the other hand, the same channels, citing the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), claimed that after Trump’s election, Ukrainian soldiers were surrendering eight times more frequently. However, the video supporting this claim was fabricated, and the ISW has never reported such statistics.
Various public figures also reported that shortly after Trump’s election, he was removed from Myrotvorets, an unofficial Ukrainian site that compiles information about people accused of colluding with Russia or supporting separatist movements. These claims were based on a fake screenshot from the site that circulated in 2018.
Propagandists framed Trump’s victory as a sign that U.S. support for Ukraine would stop. For instance, they cited The Wall Street Journal in claiming that newly elected Vice President J.D. Vance had twice refused to take a call from Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office. However, the WSJ never published such a story. Shortly after the election, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels also circulated a fake screenshot of a tweet supposedly from Elon Musk that featured an image of a dollar bill with Trump flipping the middle finger and the caption: “The last dollar for Zelensky.”
Blaming Ukraine for foreign events
When protests broke out in Georgia after the government suspended talks on EU membership, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and media spread a screenshot of a listing supposedly posted on a Ukrainian job portal. The ad was said to be seeking “strong men” with protest experience to send to Tbilisi. The forgery was based on a job listing from a few days earlier in Chernihiv for a security guard.
Other fake stories alleged Ukraine’s involvement in a failed assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in May. Major Russian newspapers such as Moskovsky Komsomolets and Argumenty i Fakti claimed that the wife of writer Yury Cintula, who shot at the politician, was a refugee who had been in contact with Ukrainian intelligence services and had convinced her husband to attack the pro-Russian Slovak leader.
These claims were refuted by Slovak authorities, journalists who examined the documents, and testimonies from the couple’s acquaintances. Cintula’s wife had lived in Slovakia for at least several decades, and there was no mention of her Ukrainian origins in any open sources.
Two months later, according to Z-channels, an assassination attempt on another Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was supposedly thwarted. Reports claimed that a refugee from the Ukrainian city of Ternopil was supposed to plant an explosive device in Orban’s car, citing a recording of an alleged conversation between the would-be assassin and Ukrainian intelligence as evidence. However, Russian outlets based their reports on a fake website mimicking the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Demokrata, and the audio recording shared on the site was generated using AI.
Claim: Ukrainian war crimes in the Kursk region
After Ukrainian forces entered the Kursk region on August 6, propagandists began actively spreading reports about alleged war crimes committed by the Ukrainian military there.
Independent, reliable information about events in the occupied areas of Russia’s Kursk region remains unavailable. While the Ukrainian military organizes press tours for foreign journalists, it’s impossible to be completely certain that reporters are seeing an unbiased picture of what’s happening. Various outlets, citing eyewitnesses, have reported instances of looting in areas under the control of both Russian and Ukrainian forces. Nevertheless, at least some of the “evidence” circulating online is demonstrably fake.
Claim: Foreign officers are constantly dying in Ukraine
The Kremlin, the Russian Defense Ministry, and various Russian officials and propagandists often talk about foreign mercenaries fighting for Ukraine. There are volunteers from other countries in various Ukrainian military units, and some have been captured by Russian forces. However, propagandists spread the narrative that Russia is fighting not against Ukraine but against NATO.
The laziest among these fake stories rely on one basic tactic: when a Western country reports the sudden death of a senior military officer, Z-channels claim that the death was the result of a Russian strike on Ukraine. Examples include Polish General Adam Marczak and Canadian Lieutenant Colonel Kent Miller, who both died in Belgium this year. According to pro-Kremlin outlets, they were killed in Chasiv Yar and near Sumy respectively — a claim unsupported by any evidence.
In some cases, fabricated social media posts serve as “proof.” For instance, in September, after a missile strike on Poltava reportedly killed more than 50 Ukrainian soldiers, Z-channels claimed that Swedish instructors were among the casualties and that local children were being forced to donate blood for wounded foreigners. These claims were based on doctored screenshots of posts attributed to a Swedish volunteer and a Ukrainian medic, both of which were fake.
A similar fake story circulated a month and a half later, claiming that the wife of an American pilot had posted on social media that her husband had been killed (along with several F-16 fighter jets) in a Russian strike on an airbase in the Khmelnytskyi region. In this case, the authors of the story didn’t just fake a Facebook post — they created a fake profile of a real person.
In the spring, propagandists reacted to a statement by French President Emmanuel Macron in which he expressed his willingness to send French troops to Ukraine. Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed that in early May, around 100 soldiers from the French Foreign Legion had been deployed near Sloviansk. The outlets cited reports from an anonymous pro-war Telegram channel and French conspiracy theorists, which stated that the soldiers were from a unit stationed in South America, responsible for guarding the French spaceport in Kourou.
A few days later, pro-war accounts began circulating photos of coffins with French soldiers allegedly killed in Ukraine. In reality, the photo had been taken 4 1/2 years earlier at a ceremony honoring soldiers who died during an anti-terrorist operation in Mali.
Claim: Western media is turning against Ukraine
Toward the end of the year, pro-Kremlin Telegram channels published several fake stories suggesting that by the third year of the full-scale war, major foreign media outlets (especially American ones) were so exhausted from covering it that their own staff had started making anti-Ukrainian remarks on air. Anchors were allegedly laughing after stories about Ukrainian military losses, complaining about the constant discussion of Ukraine. However, all of these videos had been edited, and the content was taken from fragments of various programs aired years earlier.
This method of creating fake stories is not new, nor is it used solely to support the narrative of Western society’s fatigue with the war in Ukraine. For example, in December, a supposed clip from NBC’s coverage of the Notre-Dame Cathedral reopening ceremony went viral — it showed Macron greeting Zelensky while the American network allegedly promoted the show “Great Thieves of the 21st Century,” clearly insinuating corruption by the Ukrainian leader. Once again, the video had been edited, and a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel spread the fake story.
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