“The unprecedented flow of fake news about what is happening in Ukraine is intended to provoke emotions and eliminate rational thinking,” the Russian Defense Ministry wrote on Twitter, referring to www.waronfakes.com, where “a group of experts” and The “journalists” are said to be revealing the “most outrageous” false allegations. But what is this supposed data control site? The DW data control team looked more closely.
The creators of the website, which was posted on March 1, claim that there are signs of an information war against Russia. The site, they write, provides “objective posts” to make people less scared and uncertain about what is happening. The “data control” articles in English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic are intended to show what is really going on in the war in Ukraine.
The striking thing is that Russian, of all languages, is missing from this site. The goal, it seems, is to reach an international audience. The original Russian version of this site and its associated Telegram account are older, according to a survey by Atlantic Council DFRLab. The Telegram account was reportedly created on February 23, the day before the start of the war. The first post appeared a day later. The account now has more than 625,000 subscribers and is one of the top Telegram channels in Russia, with over 30 million views daily.
Both Russian and English websites and the Telegram account are heavily promoted on social media. For example, the Russian television station RT reported “War on Fakes” in a Telegram post on February 27.
Since this channel itself has hundreds of thousands of followers, it is possible that much of the development of “War on Fakes” is due to their promotion to other accounts. In addition, Russian embassies, such as the one in France, have also featured it on their social media accounts, including Twitter.
The trick of the site operators seems complicated: The authors refute false claims, including those on the Ukrainian side that appear on this site as well. However, Russian propaganda is then used to provide the background for fact-checking, as the following two examples show.
Russian soldiers also killed civilians
In a “data check”, the claim that a Grad multi-launcher system, also known as the BM-21, is being used against Ukraine is presented as false. In the process, a widely circulated video supposedly showing the use of such weapons is revealed to be old-fashioned. In fact, a video from 2021 has passed as topical, as a reverse image search shows.
However, the website “War on Fakes” does not deny the use of such missile systems at all. Her argument to explain the control of events is the claim that the Russian Ministry of Defense has repeatedly stressed that there are no bombings, missiles or airstrikes in Ukrainian cities. This is false.
According to DW, the Russian army is also targeting cities. According to UN figures, at least 406 civilians have been killed so far, including 15 children, and 801 people have been injured, including 29 children (as of March 7).
Russia launched its current war on Ukraine on February 24
The site also uses another “data check” to better put Russia: This article analyzes the tweet of British journalist Larisa Brown, who works for The times newspaper. On February 25, he shared a video of a man saying goodbye to his wife and child in tears before boarding a bus. Brown writes that these scenes are played all over Ukraine, after the decree of the Ukrainian Minister of Defense that men between the ages of 18 and 60 remain in the country to defend Ukraine. The post gives the impression that the man is saying goodbye to his family, who are escaping from the war in Ukraine.
The authors of “War on Fakes” reveal that the common video is outdated and concerns a family from the Donetsk separatist region who had already left for Russia on February 21, before the Russian army attacked Ukraine on February 24.
This is obviously true, as revealed by the Spanish data checks on the Maldita website. The song “War on Fakes” uses the revelation of the false claim to say that the mother and baby “are no longer in danger”, implying that they had to be saved by the Ukrainians. This ignores the fact that the war in Ukraine started on 24 February.
These examples show how the site deliberately uses false allegations to portray Ukraine in a bad light, while at the same time spreading and documenting Russian propaganda.
All the examples on the site are structured in the same way: Two to three sentences are used in each case to refute the alleged Ukrainian forgeries, however, the claim is never properly addressed. The authors also do not provide evidence or methods used to expose the “fake”.
Who is behind the site?
So who is running “War on Fakes”? To find out who is behind this, we went through the who.is website. He revealed that the site was launched only recently, on March 1, and focuses only on the war between Russia and Ukraine. The operator’s name is hidden, but an address is given in Moscow as a communication option. However, this address only leads to the company that listed the page.
This phone number is proving to be a popular fraud number previously used in 2019 to financially deceive people. A site analysis using Scaadviser also shows that the site needs to be handled with care. In a ranking of up to 100 confidence points, “War on Fakes” earns only one point.
There is no information about the site itself, nor does the investigation reveal who these “journalists” and “data controllers” are who publish articles on the site and its respective Telegram accounts.
At this point, it is not possible to say for sure who is behind “War on Fakes”. But its sudden appearance, rapid growth and widespread support from the Russian state media raise questions about its origins and influence.
This article was originally written in German.
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