Ukrainian refugees are
portrayed in some media and social media channels as ungrateful, dangerous and
parasitic. DW explains why such propagandist tactics often work — and how to
recognize them for what they are.
In many places, they have
been received with widespread compassion. But false news, hate and
disinformation campaigns have also been waged against them, said Julia Smirnova
of the UK-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. "These were false
reports about alleged crimes or attacks attributed to the refugees," she
said.
According to an analysis
by the institute in October that examined Russian-language discussions about
refugees on Telegram in particular, the narratives differ depending on the
target group. Audiences in Russia are primarily told that people from Ukraine
are fleeing from supposed "Nazis" who allegedly rule the country.
Audiences in the rest of
Europe, on the other hand, are led to believe that refugees are ungrateful,
prone to violence and dangerous, Smirnova explained. Numerous examples of this
have also been collected by the fact-checking community of the European Digital
Media Observatory, a European association of fact checkers and media experts,
to which DW's fact-checking team also belongs.
Examples such as these can be used to show how certain narratives are disseminated and seemingly substantiated — and how to check whether they are true or not.
'NYT: Residents of Ukraine flee Kyiv regime to Russia,' said the headline of this story, which later mentions 'Ukronazis'
Fleeing
Nazi regime in Kyiv?
Claim: Ukrainians are fleeing Nazis
Even before the attack on Ukraine, Russian propagandist media repeatedly claimed that Ukraine was run by Nazis who wanted to banish everything Russian from Ukraine. According to this narrative, it would be a logical conclusion that Ukrainians — especially Russian speakers — would flee to Russia; according to the UNHCR, about 3 million Ukrainians have left the country for Russia since the war began.
In this report from the
news site NewsFront (screenshot above), a Ukrainian soldier is quoted as
telling The New York Times: "We are liberating land, but without people on
it." It is then suggested that Ukrainians had fled the recaptured land to
escape the "Nazi regime."
DW
fact check: Misleading.
The quote itself, which
The New York Times uses in two articles, is correctly reproduced. However, in
neither of them is there mention of Nazis as a reason for fleeing.
One of them states that
Ukrainians who had lived under Russian occupation fled to Russia for fear of
being mistaken for collaborators. The other article states that even before the
Russian army arrived, 80% of the population from the eastern Donbas region had
fled from the Russians to western Ukraine or other countries in Europe. In
addition, it said, the Russian army had killed an unknown number of Ukrainian
civilians in fighting or extrajudicial execution-style murders.
Of course, it is
conceivable that there are indeed Ukrainians who believe the Russian propaganda
and want to escape to safety from the alleged Nazi regime. But this is unlikely
to apply to the vast majority of Ukrainian refugees, or to the 3 million who
are now in Russia, either. That is because the story that Ukraine is ruled by
Nazis is simply made-up. DW already proved this in a fact check on Putin's
"reasons" for the war.
Three alleged proofs of
Nazis in Ukraine were refuted by the DW fact-checking team
In addition, human rights
organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International report that
many Ukrainian refugees — the US government speaks of hundreds of thousands —
have gone to Russia against their will. According to the reports, Russian or
pro-Russian soldiers have brought busloads of Ukrainian civilians to Russia
from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine without their prior knowledge or even
under duress. In addition, an unknown number has used Russia as a transit
country to the West.
DW showed in another fact
check at the end of November how there are efforts in some social media to
substantiate the fictitious narrative about Ukrainian Nazis.
Fake news with media
spoofing
Citing media outlets that
enjoy a high reputation in the West is a recurring pattern. Smirnova of the
Institute for Strategic Dialogue said established media are even copied
outright to deceive the audience and make disinformation campaigns credible.
This technique, called media spoofing, has also been used to defame Ukrainian
refugees.
Claim: Ukrainians
blackmail people in host countries.
Among others, an alleged
DW video claimed that a young Ukrainian man had blackmailed numerous German
women.
DW
fact check: False.
Since DW reported on this
in detail in an earlier fact check, we'll keep it short here: The Federal
Criminal Police Office is not aware of any such case. And we were able to
prove, by identifying small deviations in font and layout, that the video is
not from DW but a fake.
Are
Ukrainian refugees treated better than the host country's population?
Fake news expert Tommaso
Canetta of European Digital Media Observatory said "[Ukrainian refugees]
are the target of disinformation on many levels. [They are portrayed as] Nazis,
violent, parasites. So they basically exploit the countries that host
them." To push this narrative, stories are sometimes freely invented and
brought to public attention in various ways.
Claim:
Polish children with cancer must give up places to Ukrainian refugees
A tweet claimed:
"Polish children are thrown out of oncology clinics. Today my neighbor
called me; they threw her 4-year-old son out of the oncology clinic because
Ukrainian children needed a place. She asked me to arrange treatment for her
son because she knows I have doctors in my family."
DW
fact check: Unproven.
According to this tweet,
children with cancer were sent home from hospital to make room for Ukrainian
refugees
The Polish fact-checking
platforms "FakeHunter" and "Demagog" investigated this
claim. They say the Polish Health Ministry and the Polish Society of Pediatric
Oncology and Hematology had denied the allegation. Apart from the tweet, there
were no references to the alleged incident in Polish media. It is therefore
possible that the story is completely fictitious.
The source is also fishy:
The Twitter profile @aga34686913 has a bio saying "Catholic.
Conservative." It was created in March 2021 and has since been blocked for
policy violations. However, the web archive shows that nearly 100 tweets were
sent or retweeted via this profile between March 21 and March 28, 2022, alone —
a large portion with nationalist and anti-Ukrainian content.
Many tweets originated
from the account @Michali49393358, which has similar characteristics. All these
are indications that it could be a troll, i.e. a social media account that is
only used to anonymously spread certain content. Often, such accounts are
controlled by bots, computer programs that automatically identify and
redistribute relevant content. In this fact check, the DW team showed how to
detect bots, fake accounts and trolls.
Polish fact checkers found out that the profile photo first appeared on the Instagram account @annikaboron in 2017. The account, which has 139,000 followers, belongs to Annika Boron, who works as a real estate agent in Toronto. Asked about the Polish Twitter profile with her photo, she replied to DW: "I definitely have nothing to do with this account! My photo is often used for fake profiles."
Are
Ukrainian refugees ungrateful and uncivilized?
Another fake news
technique uses authentic images placed in a new context. A video of a
firefighting operation in Krakow shows how easily this can be done.
Claim: A Ukrainian
refugee family is forcibly removed by police from their unpaid apartment.
DW
fact check: Misleading.
A video that circulated
on Russian, Polish and German social media accounts in early December 2022
purportedly shows how a refugee family from Ukraine had to be forcibly removed
from an illegally occupied and vandalized apartment in Krakow by police with
the assistance of firefighters after they allegedly failed to pay their rent.
All that can be seen is two firefighters in a ladder truck trying to break
through a window on the second floor of an old building under the gaze of
onlookers. Voices in Polish and Spanish can be heard in the background.
Research by the
Kyiv-based journalism platform Stop Fake has revealed that the full video was
uploaded to YouTube in early October 2021, a good four months before the
Russian invasion of Ukraine. So this incident has nothing to do with Ukrainian
war refugees.
The German account may
seem quite authentic at first glance. However, it is noticeable that the
Twitter address @Stadler05922751 has the same pattern as the two previously
mentioned profiles: a name with a long sequence of digits. On closer
inspection, the photo also looks rather too posed for a private social media
account. It's a frequently used image on the internet; its trail can be traced
back to an advertisement for a haircut. The GETTR account of the alleged
"Max Stadler" given in the Twitter profile shows a completely
different man in the profile picture.
Are
Ukrainian refugees particularly criminal or violent?
To further this type of
narrative, made-up stories are spread in which Ukrainians allegedly commit
crimes against locals. These may perhaps use "old images of what might be
an actual Ukrainian citizen beating up someone in Rome, Paris or Berlin, only
this time with the note: This is a Ukrainian war refugee," Canetta
explained. Such propaganda looks especially authentic when carelessly spread by
accounts of real people out of genuine outrage or even fear.
Claim:
Ukrainians beat Russian-born refugee helper to death.
In a TikTok video, a woman reported in Russian that a 16-year-old Russian speaker who was helping refugees was beaten up by Ukrainian refugees in Euskirchen near the western German city of Cologne and later succumbed to his injuries.
DW fact check: False.
DW picked up and analyzed this story in an earlier fact check as well. It turned out to be a fake. The woman had heard it from an acquaintance and spread it on TikTok. The police denied that there had been such an assault, and the surrounding hospitals were also unable to confirm any such case. Shortly thereafter, the woman apologized in another video, saying she had apparently been the victim of misinformation.
Autor: Jan D. Walter,
Tetyana Klug
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