Manipulations on social media about the alleged “absence of war in Ukraine”
Manipulative videos are spreading in the Polish segment of social media, in which the author claims that there is “no war” in Ukraine because the streets of Ukrainian cities appear calm.
▫️ As “evidence,” the blogger shows footage from Kyiv, Lviv, and Kharkiv where people are walking, cafés are operating, and there is no visible destruction at the moment of filming. These videos are being shared by other users alongside narratives claiming that the “media are lying to everyone” and that support for Ukraine is merely “propaganda.”
As noted by Polish fact-checkers from the Demagog Association, these videos show only a selective fragment of reality rather than the full picture. Although the main hostilities are concentrated in eastern and southern Ukraine, russia regularly carries out aerial attacks across the entire country.
Moreover, fact-checkers identified direct falsehoods: in one of the videos, the author claims to be in the frontline city of Kramatorsk, while the footage was actually filmed in Kharkiv, as confirmed through geolocation.
▫️ It is also notable that the author’s Instagram page, in addition to these videos, contains photos from trips across regions of russia, which may indicate bias.
The purpose of such publications is to sow distrust in media coverage of russia’s aggression against Ukraine and undermine financial support for Ukraine from its international partners.
The Center previously also reported on the resurgence in the Polish social media segment of an old fake narrative claiming that the war in Ukraine is allegedly “staged.”
