Fake#5 Fugitive Ukrainian mobilization has begun in Europe
Russia has adopted a law allowing military registration to send electronic military draft papers instead of personally handing them to citizens. This caused a resonance in Russian society. And in Belarus, the state-run media has also picked up on this.
Thus, the Telegram channel “SB.BY Belarus Today” published a video about how Ukrainians are allegedly being harshly mobilized.
“There is parking on the highway near Warsaw. The personnel of the Polish private company Rutkowski Patroll has arrived. Some men were dragged out and stuffed into cars. In response to the protests of the Poles, they said that they had a special document. Packed persons were ordered for delivery to the border of Ukraine. Has the mobilization of fugitive Ukrainians begun in Europe?”
Belarussian state-run Telegram channel claimed.
In this comment, only two facts are true, such as the location and time of the events in the video. Indeed, this happened in a parking area in April 2023. And everything else is fiction.
The source of this video tells a very different story. Here people demand money in Russian: “Money, give us money!”
The video was posted on April 9 in the Facebook group “Russian-speaking Drivers of Europe. Truckers”. It is titled “LUK-MAZ, AGMAZ and the Empire Collapses” and tells the story of a strike of truckers working for the Polish logistics companies LUK-MAZ, AGMAZ, and Imperia Logistics.
Truck drivers went on strike in a parking lot in Germany over unpaid wages and blocked Polish trucks there. A representative of logistics companies arrived there, accompanied by the Polish private security company Rutkowski Patrol. A brawl ensued, which was shown by SB.BY Belarus Today.
The German police arrived at the scene. The story received a wide response in the German media. Ukraine and mobilization are not involved in this story at all.
Fake#4 Ex-Prosecutor General of Ukraine was disgraced by a non-heroic video with a scar
A fake video from the trench with the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko was posted on the YouTube channel of state-run media “SB.BY Belarus Today”.
Here is the propaganda’s comment:
“The former Prosecutor General of Ukraine was disgraced by an unheroic clip with a scar. What did he smoke? Even Ukrainians ask this question. Ex-Prosecutor General of Ukraine calls to prepare for war. But the scar and bruises are clearly painted with children's watercolors. The make-up and the sounds of space combat made the internet laugh."
The same videos were published by Russian Arguments and Facts and Life.ru.
The source of the video is a Tiktok account consisting entirely of sarcastic fakes on Lutsenko, Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk, and other Ukrainian politicians. Nobody even hides the fact that they have fun here by imposing special effects on video.
By the way, here is the original video posted by Yuriy Lutsenko’s press secretary in August 2022. There is he without any makeup.
Fake#3 Map showing how China wants to divide Russia published
The Russian media interpret Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Russia as nothing more than that Russia now has an ally in the war. Conversely, China wants to carve up Russia, reports with arguments filmmaker and YouTuber Andrei Kureichik.
“Chinese state television showed a version of how Russia will be divided among other countries. Possibly, as a result of this war. By the way, not a bad division,” Andrei Kureichik claims.
This map of the partition of Russia was circulating among social media a year ago.
But it's Photoshop. This can be obvious if you translate Chinese subtitles through the Google Translate service. All of them are about the market and finance, and the host is signed as an investment advisor.
Google search results say this map was posted online at least 3 years ago, long before Russia's full-scale invasion. And it shows which country is closer to a person, depending on where in Russia he is.
Chinese media have already identified the alleged host. He really is an investment advisor, and there is a video of him on one of the financial apps. Apparently, his image was taken from there and superimposed on the map.
The Internet Archive contains a screenshot of the original 2021 video, which has now been deleted. Pay attention to his pose and clothes, which are the same.
Fake #2 Belarus managed to reduce inflation thanks to state regulation of prices
In Belarus, household real income turned out to be lower in the first two months of 2023, than a year ago. And in such a context, state-run TV Belarus-1 host Aleksey Avdonin quoted the words of Belarussian Minister of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade Aleksey Bogdanov about how the state has managed to reduce inflation thanks to state regulation of prices.
“Introduction of a new system of price regulation made it possible to reduce inflation and increase the share of sales of domestic goods. In October 2022, inflation was at 17.5%. By the end of the year - already 12.8%. And in March 2023, inflation reached an acceptable level of 6%,” claims Aleksey Avdonin.
The National Bank thinks otherwise. Here is what it reports on its website:
“A significant decrease in this indicator is due to the exclusion of March 2022 data from the billing period, when an accelerated increase in consumer prices was observed during the month.
The current intensity of inflationary processes remains moderate.”
In Belarus, in March 2022, inflation jumped sharply and reached 14%. Then the inflation rate was already so high, but that March data spoiled the annual statistics. Now, the bad month has simply dropped out of the statistics, cause it is calculated for 12 months, that is, from April 2022 to March 2023.
In addition, after the surge, inflation returned to its normal state, which it was before the introduction of government price regulation in October 2022.
Fake #1 Ukraine is responsible for world hunger and nations’ exodus predicted by UN’s head
Russia has blocked three bulk carriers with grain from Ukraine. And in this context, state-run TV “Belarus-1” claims that United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres predicts a famine and an exodus of entire nations on a biblical scale to the world.
“The consequences of all of this are unthinkable. Low-lying communities and entire countries could disappear forever. We would witness a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale,” Belarus-1 TV cited words of Guterres in translation.
And the comment was added: “Controlled hunger goes hand in hand with increased migration flows.”
According to propagandists, the reason is that Ukraine has unbalanced the international food security system by exporting too much of its grain.
“In 2022, 45 million tons of grain were exported from Ukraine to the West,” the propagandist Sych claimed.
According to Sych, this collapsed grain prices on the world market, and it became unprofitable for Western farmers to work. This means that they will plant and grow less. And as a result, the harvest will be less.
But in fact, Ukraine did not export so much grain. In searching for the source of this fake data, we found that Russian media, such as the TASS agency and the Izvestiya newspaper, reported this in February.
Izvestia refers to the joint statement of the participants of the EU-Ukraine summit, which took place in Kyiv on February 3.
But in fact, the statement says about another number: “Over 23 million tonnes of Ukrainian grain, oilseeds, and other products were brought to world markets between May and December 2022.”
That is, in fact, two times less. It also says about 45 million tons. But this is the entire export of various Ukrainian goods to the EU. That is, Russian state-run media wanted to show that Ukraine exports much more grain to the West than it actually does.
In addition, in 2022 a record harvest of wheat was gathered in the world, which naturally lowered prices.
And the words of Guterres also turned out to be falsified.
"We would have witnessed a mass exodus of entire nations on a biblical scale," he said this about climate and sea level rise, but not about famine and Ukrainian grain.
Here is his full quote:
“The consequences of all of this are unthinkable. Low-lying communities and entire countries could disappear forever. We would witness a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale. With rising sea levels creating new arenas for conflict as competition for freshwater sources and land intensifies.”
Scientists sound the alarm because global sea levels have risen faster in the 20th century than in any other century in the last 3,000 years, and the world's oceans have warmed faster, than at any time in the last 11,000 years.
As a result, heated water expands and overflows its banks, plus glaciers melt faster. And this can be a great problem for such countries as Bangladesh, China, India, and the Netherlands.
