5th place

The state run ONT telegram channel and the newspaper “Minskaya Pravda” both reported a scary story:

“President Biden's executive assistant was found dead in the suburbs of Washington D.C. The leading cause of his death is suicide. It is widely known that Francis Underwood had lately been taking antidepressants due to bipolar disorder. It’s well known that he was one of those who found classified papers in Biden's garage”.

Suspiciously the only source of this information is a Russian telegram channel called the “very sexy dasha”. The attached photo was actually published in 2015 and was used in a gunfire report in the state of Georgia. 

The media of the US haven’t mentioned this case. Oddly, the name of that executive assistant of the president, Francis Underwood, coincides with the name of the fictional character in Netflix's series 'House of Cards'.  It is about the 46th President of the US, portrayed by Kevin Spacey. 

Interestingly, the 46th president of the USA is Joe Biden, which gives this fake story a new wider undertone. 

4th place

Another telegram channel called “Mogiliovskie Novosti” reported the following:

“Sviatlana Tikhanovskaya renounced the authority of the President of Belarus”.

Her alleged quote was:

“I must admit that I'm ahead of my time. The people of Belarus are not ready for democracy. I haven’t gained the support I needed. Those who are born to crawl shall never fly. Our chance will come when the last person with a soviet way of thinking drops dead”. 

This time the source was a telegram channel that is called “Jokes about Politics”. The original post included hashtags #joke #humorous and #sarcasm, which were later missing in the post in “Mogiliovskie novosti”, thus making the information look more serious.

3rd place

The state-run TV-channel ONT reported that the World Economic Forum is no longer the same as it used to be.

“The forum was a revealing one. They claim that the most important was the number of businessmen that had arrived. But from the crème de la crème only Scholz was there, although one could hardly call him a world class leader. Biden was absent. Russia and China were absent”. 

In fact, aside from Scholz, the President of South Korea was present. The prime ministers of Morocco, Spain, Finland and other countries attended the forum. Belarus was represented at the Forum by Sviatlana Tikhanovskaya.

The TV-channel ONT stated the following results: “The western countries were not allowed to judge Russia on the G20 and they decided to do this on the economic forum where Russian and Chinese businessmen were deliberately not invited. In the end, the economic forum appeared to be a NATO ideological congress”.  

In truth Russia was absent in Davos due to the western sanctions. But China was represented by Liu He, the Vice Premier of the People’s Republic of China. On the forum he spoke about the openness of China to foreign investments. Liu even held a meeting with the Minister of Finance of the US. 

The absence of Chinese businessmen is explained by their specific anti-COVID-19 measures and lockdowns, which had to be imposed due to the new waves of COVID-19 that broke out after the vigilance was reduced during the protests.  

2nd place

The American kids were allowed not only to choose their gender but also their biological species, reported by TV-channel Belarus-1. The quote:

“American madness extends further than the legalization of different sexual perversities. The kids and the teenagers, whose gender is nobody’s business, can enjoy another pastime. Now they identify themselves as animals. It was noted by an American senator Bruce Bostelman:

“I am a little bit shocked. This is called furry. If you don't know what furries are, it's when children dress up as cats or dogs during the school day. They meow and they bark and they interact with their teachers in this fashion.  And now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools for these children to use. How is it sanitary? How can the schools allow this to happen?”

This incident actually happened in March, 2022. Bruce Bostelman indeed said it but a few hours later he apologized. Another senator published this on Twitter:

“Announcement: Senator Bostelman picked up a microphone again to tell that together with the chairman of the Committee on Education, they contacted several school authorities and discovered that they were not going to provide the cat trays for furries”.

Despite the fact that Bostelman apologized, the video is getting a lot of views including 900 000 views on Twitter.

AP Agency reported that similar rumors about kids behaving like animals have been circulating in the USA since December, 2021. Even before the senator's complaint, this fact had been denied by the officials of several schools.

Neither “Belarus-1” channel nor STV reported the senator’s apology for spreading fake news. 

1st place

“Belarus becomes a popular tourist destination and European tourism operators experience severe losses”. The article with this title and similar meaning was published in the newspaper “SB. Belarus Today”. Here is one of the quotes:

“According to the latest analysis, the European tourism industry has lost more than €20 billion due to the lockdown policy. The severe losses are experienced by Spain, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Finland. In particular, Spain’s Institute of tourism reports losses of about €1.4 billion. The owners of tourism infrastructure are missing their former profits”.

Actually the profits of the tourist year were higher than estimated. The tourist traffic reached 80% compared to the pre-pandemic level. It means that it was the most successful year after 2019.

The number of overnight stays in Europe is just 5% lower than it was in 2019. The international tourist transit was increasing faster in Denmark, Croatia and Luxembourg. It was worse for Lithuania, Latvia and Slovakia. Although the number of Russian tourists at the foreign resorts has significantly decreased. Yet it was not the case for Spain that managed to earn even more in the field of tourism in 2019.

As for Russia, in comparison to 2019 there was a decrease in tourism, although it did not disappear completely. Last year foreign tourists made about 10 million trips into Russia, which is 2.5 times less than in 2019.

Belarus, in comparison to 2018, welcomed 4 times fewer tourists. Nevertheless the tourism sphere in Belarus has grown last year, compared to the 2021.