The latest Russian assaults on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv have been accompanied by a new wave of disinformation designed to confuse, demoralize, and frighten the local population.

Disinformation has been central to Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine, dating back to before the 2014 invasion. Our new report for Human Rights First details how local human rights activists in Kharkiv have been fighting disinformation, tracking and debunking Russian-backed propaganda.

Much of the latest wave of disinformation has been timed to coincide with Russian advances into Ukraine which began on May 10, since when Russian forces have taken a series of villages on the road between the Russian border and the city of Kharkiv, which is about 25 miles inside Ukraine.

Intense fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces continues in and around villages and towns such as Vovchansk, Lyptsi, and Kupiansk. The Institute for the Study of War has reports that the Russian army is aiming to get within artillery range of Kharkiv city, as Ukrainian forces mount counterattacks north and northeast of Kharkiv.

Following the February 2022 invasion, fact-checking volunteers in Kharkiv mobilized quickly to debunk Kremlin disinformation.

Journalism monitor NewsGuard, which has a dedicated Russia-Ukraine disinformation Tracking Center, shows how pro-Russian disinformation flooded social media feeds in the U.S. and Europe in early 2022. Messages included “Ukraine is a Nazi country,” “Ukraine is not a real country and it belongs to Russia,” and “Ukraine is committing genocide against Russian-speaking residents.” Other popular conspiracies involve the U.S.: “The U.S. is using Ukraine to fight a war with Russia,” and “The U.S. has a bioweapons lab in Ukraine.”

Recent monitoring of Russian disinformation in Ukraine reveals a new trend of attempting to undermine trust in the Ukrainian military and President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Russian disinformation is sophisticated and poses a real challenge, even for experienced fact-checkers,” said Madeline Roache, UK managing editor of NewsGuard in London. “Since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia has employed new tactics. There are now more fake fact-checking news sites that target specific Ukrainian cities, and videos that use news logos from real Western media organizations.”

Kharkiv’s location just miles from Russian-occupied territory makes it particularly vulnerable to Russian disinformation. Many villages and towns outside of the city were taken by Russian forces at the start of the 2022 invasion, and were subjected to months of Russian occupation and propaganda.

Gwara Media, a Kharkiv independent media organization, has set up the bot Perevirka (Ukrainian for audit) to detect fake news. With this bot people can submit any news in Ukrainian or English, and within 24 hours you will find out whether you can trust the chosen publication. Thanks to the bot, they can process tens of thousands of requests.

Latest propaganda lines are about evacuation orders, and about teenagers being forced to join Ukraine’s army.

Another fake story claimed Ukrainian military personnel were present at a Kharkiv shopping centre that was destroyed by a Russian missile strike on May 25, 2024. Journalists fact-checked the story and found that all 19 casualties and 48 injured were civilians.  

Russian disinformation campaigns in Kharkiv have proven to be agile, reacting quickly to changes in the war and supporting specific military pushes. Nazar Hlamazda, a disinformation analyst at Gwara Media, said that this latest wave of disinformation began on May 10, when the most recent wave of Russian advances began, and lasted until early June.

“The Russians immediately started a campaign to create panic in the city, with the main target being the Kharkiv authorities. For example, on May 10 the Russians reported that Governor Synegubov (the governor of Kharkiv) had fled to Poltava, and the next day spread fake news that the mayor’s office, the regional council, and the regional military administration were taking documents from the region. The news also falsely claimed that they had captured the village of Lyptsi, on the road to Kharkiv city” said Hlamazda.

Local human rights activists say that donors and allies should offer more support to local independent media organizations who are fact-checking and debunking Russian-backed propaganda.

They also want social media companies to do more to tackle disinformation, not only by removing harmful and misleading content, but by pursuing structural changes to algorithms that promote misinformation, investing in more resources to address disinformation in languages beyond English.

 

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Professor Brian Dooley is Senior Advisor at Human Rights First, a U.S.- based NGO and Honorary Professor of Practice at the Mitchell Institute. He specialises in working with Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) in conflict and post-conflict contexts, and was senior advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on HRDs Mary Lawlor 2020-2023. His most recent work has been in the Hong Kong revolution and on Russia’s war on Ukraine. He has also written two books related to the conflict in Northern Ireland, including a comparative study of the civil rights movements in the U.S. and Northern Ireland.

Maya Fernandez-Powell is a Human Rights First Researcher.