Antifake / Factcheck

19 April 2023

Top 5 Fake News. “We will meet soon,” Solovyov commented on the death of Tatarsky

Since 2022 Vladimir Solovyov hasn’t updated his Twitter account.

After Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky's murder, the following screenshot of Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov's Twitter appeared on the Ukrainian Telegram channel Fashik Donetsky.

This post is fake. Since 2022 Vladimir Solovyov hasn’t updated his Twitter account. He posted his last tweet in the fall of 2022. There have been no new tweets since then.

The other side is also faking tweets. For example, on April 1, Russian bloggers published a fake tweet by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Latvia, who allegedly made a bad joke about Zelensky.

Thus, the Telegram channel Ponomar said:

“Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs Edgar Rinkevich decided to joke, and on April 1, he announced that Ukraine was accepted into the EU.

After this caused a backlash, Rinkevich apologized and deleted the tweet. It’s the best trolling of Ze.”

Of course, there is no such tweet in the profile of Edgar Rinkevich now. We contacted the ministry’s press service to find out if he wrote a similar post. And here is the answer:

“The Minister of Foreign Affairs has issued none of those tweets ascribed to him in the Russian propaganda. This is deliberate manipulation and lies spread by Russia’s propaganda machine.”

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The US economy is breaking down before our eyes 

In spite of the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar growing in Belarus, the state propaganda media prophecy its near demise.

The fact that several banks went bankrupt in the United States is taken as evidence of the dollar's collapse by political scientist Vadim Elfimov. And in confirmation, he uses a citation from US billionaire Ken Griffin's interview:

«Another breaking down of American capitalism. Perhaps the last one. The very last… To avoid being unfounded, I’ll give one more quote from the most successful tech-raised billionaire in the US. 

Ken Griffin, the founder of hedge fund Citadel, said in an interview with the Financial Times, the main Wall Street newspaper:

“The US is supposed to be a capitalist economy, and that’s breaking down before our eyes.” 

So America will stop ruling the world as soon as people start getting rid of the dollar.”

The British Financial Times did indeed publish Ken Griffin's interview. And its headline consisted of those high-sounding words that were quoted by Elfimov, who, apparently, didn’t read the article beyond the headline.

Because the billionaire connected the US capitalism collapse with the fact that the state began to bail out all the depositors of these banks, but not with the bankruptcy of banks.

Griffin told the Financial Times that the US government should not have intervened to protect all SVB depositors following the collapse of the Santa Clara-based bank on Friday.

“The US is supposed to be a capitalist economy, and that’s breaking down before our eyes,” he said in an interview on Monday, a day after US regulators pledged to protect all depositors in SVB — even those with balances above the $250,000 federal insurance limit.

There’s been a loss of financial discipline with the government bailing out depositors in full,” Griffin added.

At the same time, Griffin notes that the US economy is strong enough.

“We’re at full employment, credit losses have been minimal, and bank balance sheets are at their strongest ever. We can address the issue of moral hazard from a position of strength,” he said.

In other words, Griffin believes that the US is strong because of its capitalist economy. And there is no global catastrophe in the bankruptcy of several of the nearly five thousand US banks.

Also, according to his opinion, if the government starts bailing out the bankrupt with taxpayer money, then America could lose its capitalist competitiveness.

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In the US, the homeless and unemployed are called on to fight in Ukraine 

On the very day when the US announces a new $2.6 billion package of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, on Russian social networks, an image of an announcement appears, that calls on the homeless and unemployed in the United States to go to war in Ukraine.

It is also reported by the famous Russian blogger Yuri Podolyaka.

“Tired of living on welfare? Go fight in Ukraine!

For participation, they promise international volunteer status, medical insurance, and monthly payments,” — Podolyaka claimed.

The ad contains the phone number of the Ukrainian embassy in the United States. However, we were unable to reach anybody. 

Then we asked the International Legion of Ukraine because the announcement was allegedly made by them. Here is the response we received from the Legion.

“Neither the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine nor any other structure of Ukrainian Armed Forces, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or their structures (confirmed by Oleg Nikolenko, speaker of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) create, publish or promote such or similar messages. Not in the US, not in other countries,” the Legion stated. 

The Legion considered it a  fake. Although the Legion does not deny that the Americans are fighting in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. But for ideological reasons, and not because of mercenary considerations or a failed life.

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Belarus is an education hub of Eastern Europe

Alexander Lukashenko claims Belarus is an educational hub of Eastern Europe. And this was picked up by the political scientist Pyotr Petrovsky. 

On the official YouTube channel of the state-run news agency Minsk News, he states that Americans are brainwashed at school, and there is a very poor education, but in Belarus, everything is much better.

Here is what he said:  

“There is a very curious intellectual position in Belarus. We are not the West, we are not some kind of East, we can look at everyone from the outside. And it is very easy for us to discuss from this point. Let's imagine another scheme. We are Americans, we go to a US school, where education is so-so. The richest country, and education there is in 48th place. Moreover, the educational program is quite specific. There is no world history, no geography, there is only the geography of the United States, the history of the United States, and from the US ideology view, such as there was no colonialism, no one killed the Indians. Nazism is such a toy.” 

And now let's see what Petrovsky is wrong about.

The PISA program, launched by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, monitors results in education worldwide. It aims to evaluate education systems by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in participating countries.

Belarus has participated in the PISA program for the first and last time in 2018. Here are the results

  1. In reading literacy terms, Belarus is 36th out of 79 countries, and the United States is in 13th place.
  2. In terms of mathematical literacy, the United States was only one line ahead of Belarus and took 37th place. That is, the result is about the same.
  3. In natural sciences, Belarus is in 37th place, and the United States is in 18th place.

Thus, American students are noticeably ahead of Belarusian students in subjects not related to mathematics. And in mathematics, they are at the same level. And Petrovsky called their education “so-so”.

But what about the fact that American children do not learn world history and geography? Just watch the video from Sunnyvale City School in Silicon Valley, that our viewer sent us.

As the US teacher explains, until the sixth grade, American students study the history of their state and country. And US world history and geography begin in grades 6-7 and continue in high school.

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Nazis shot Polish officers in the Katyn massacre 

On the eve of the next anniversary of the Katyn tragedy, Russian and Belarusian propagandists suddenly claimed that the Nazis had shot Polish officers in Katyn.

Here is what was reported by the state-run TV channel "Belarus-1":

«Russian Federal Security Service has published documents that lead to the conclusion that the blame for the death of Polish officers in Katyn, previously assigned to the USSR, was the work of the Nazis.

And the German Ministry of Propaganda, headed by Goebbels, succeeded in instilling lies and hatred in the people's minds for many decades, which became a bone of contention between Poles and Russians. But the memories of the witnesses of that historical drama, documented in 1945 at the Leningrad trial, came to light.

Prisoner Arno Dürre, sent to work in the forest near Katyn, recalls how SS units brought people in trucks and dumped them into a ditch 15-20 meters deep.

It was the Nazis who shot the Polish officers in Katyn in 1941, but not the NKVD, Dürre testifies.”

It was presented as news. But the mentioned documents aren't new at all. And it cannot be said that it was unknown before.

Rather, it is a well-forgotten story. And it's forgotten because there were many oddities and inconsistencies in the testimony of SS serviceman Arno Dürre, who was captured by the Soviets.

For example, here is an excerpt from the c, which was published by the RIA Novosti agency website:

Dürre: At first I was in Poland, in 1942 I was sent to the Soviet Union.

Prosecutor: Tell us, what did you do in Poland?

Dürre: We had to work. And in 1941, we had to dig mass graves.

Prosecutor: In the Katyn forest?

Dürre: Yes, not far from Katyn.

Prosecutor: Tell us more about it.

Dürre: At the beginning of September 1941 we were sent to the forest not far from Katyn.

That is, Dure was convinced that the Katyn Forest was located in Poland, and not near Smolensk. And he dug graves in 1941, but at the same time, he was sent to the Soviet Union only in 1942.

It is also strange that the prisoner managed to avoid the death execution.

And then, in the 1950s, he returned homeland and recanted his confession, claiming the investigators forced him to confess through torture. 

In general, all this casts doubt on the veracity of his words.

Moreover, “Belarus-1” should know, that the USSR and Russia themselves have long recognized the guilt of the NKVD and the Stalinist regime in the Katyn massacre. 

On April 13, 1990, the TASS news agency reported that historians had discovered documents showing that 15,000 Polish officers held in Soviet camps were handed over to the NKVD in 1940, and there was no statistical evidence of their existence after that.

“The revealed archival materials in their totality allow us to conclude that Beria, Merkulov, and their henchmen are directly responsible for the atrocities in the Katyn forest.

The Soviet side, expressing deep regret in connection with the Katyn tragedy, declares that it represents one of the grave crimes of Stalinism.” 

In 2010, the 70th anniversary of the Katyn tragedy, the State Duma of Russia issued a statement, which called the massacre an act of arbitrariness by a totalitarian state and expressed deep sympathy for the victims. 

In the same year, Putin admitted Stalin's blame for this crime.

At a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, he even tried to explain this mass execution by Stalin's sense of revenge for the Red Army soldiers who died in the 1920s. 

"It's my personal opinion. I believe that Stalin felt personally responsible for that tragedy and did this execution out of a sense of revenge. From this, the committed act does not cease to be criminal. But maybe that could explain something," Putin said. 

Over the years, about four million documents have been declassified in the Katyn case, and 1 million sheets have been handed over to the Polish side. So the question of who is behind the Katyn massacre has long been closed.

But, in the context of a new conflict with the West, the Russian media, as in the Soviet times, again begin to refuse responsibility for the Katyn massacre.

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