On February 25–26th and 27th, Russian-language media outlets and social networks have been reporting that Ukrainians had opened fire on their own people in Kyiv, stating that members of the Ukrainian party “People’s Service” Davit Arakhamia and Yulia Palichuk have already confirmed that the victims have already been identified and that they are soldiers of the Ukrainian army. The information is accompanied by a video allegedly showing the dead soldiers. It should be noted that the information has been disseminated under identical headings: “Расстреляли своих – теперь официально” [They are now shooting their own people – now officially.”
The article of the outlet “unews.pro” also includes screenshots of the posts of David Arakhamia and Yulia Palichuk, where they write that the killed crew members are enlisted in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The texts of Arakhamia and Palichuk’s posts are identical.
The post about the alleged killing of their own soldiers by Ukrainians was also shared by the Facebook profile “Lela Praga.”
The claim that Ukrainians killed their own soldiers in Kyiv is false. The Deputy Defence Minister said saboteurs dressed in Ukrainian uniforms were driving Ukrainian cars in Kyiv, while Anton Herashchenko, the adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, said the Ukrainians had eliminated Russian saboteurs. As for the screenshots of the posts of Ukrainian MPs, they were falsified, and the information that the dead soldiers turned out to be Ukrainians was never disseminated by any of them.
On February 25th, Hanna Maliar, Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine, posted on her official Facebook page that Russian servicemen dressed in Ukrainian uniforms were moving to Kyiv using the vehicles of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The same day, Anton Herashchenko, the adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, posted a video on Telegram, noting that Russian saboteurs dressed in Ukrainian uniforms had been eliminated. The video released by Herashchenko shows the exact footage used by Russian-language media and social media to claim that Ukrainians had killed their own people.
The information disseminated by Herashchenko was never denied by the spokesperson of Zelensky’s party “Servant of the People” Yulia Palichuk and the chairman of the party Davit Arakhamia. The latter’s Facebook page is not Архамія Давід, as shown in the screenshot, but David Braun, where no post with similar content can be found. A similar post cannot be found on Yulia Palichuk’s Telegram page either.
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