Russian media spread fake about Ukrainian volunteers

  Bohdan Kolomiec:

Russian propaganda continues to sling mud at the Ukrainian volunteers. Spreading false information media are trying to discredit the Ukrainian volunteers movement who had made a significant contribution to the Euromaidan victory in 2014 and reformation of the army.

A subsidiary project of Russian media group "Russia today" (established on the basis of RIA Novosti) Ukraine.ru published an article titled "Volunteers: the most lucrative profession of Ukraine." On the example of three volunteers, Igor Serdyukov who is a journalist of Russian site, "proves," as those had earned a fortune in Ukrainians donations.

"Resourceful citizens have taken on the mission to supply weapons, ammunition, medicines and food, suffering without this Ukrainian army, and then formed a volunteer corps," — said about in the beginning of the material.

The news were reprinted by infopolk.ru, informburo.dn.ua and some others.

StopFake decided to show how Ukraine.ru misleads readers of the article using irrelevant information and disrupting the balance of opinion.

Yury Biryukov

Ukraine.ru blames the famous volunteer Yury Biryukov, the assistant of the Minister Defence of Ukraine now, in embezzlement the volunteer funds for their business projects.

"Help the front has been so successful that today Biryukov officially owns an IT business in USA and agribusiness in Ukraine", — says a Russian website.

Obviously, the author of the article makes conclusions based on the interview with Yury Biryukov dated July 1, 2014 edition of the Censor.net, where he told us about his business and this information has been fixed for the profiles on the Internet.

However, Yuriy Biryukov told StopFake that he sold his business two years ago: "just then a logout process started [summer 2014]. When the purpose has already begun and wanted to get out of businesses. A Facebook page of its agribusiness, "Kovalevskaya Strawberry", last updated in may 2014.

Tatyana Rychkova

Another objective of the material was another volunteer helping army assistant of the Minister of Defence, people's Deputy of Ukraine Tatyana Rychkova. On the basis of her published Declaration, the author concludes that she simply declared the stolen money  from volunteer help.

"According to the Declaration before the election of the Parliament Tatyana Rychkova before election in the Verkhovna Rada had income 1 689 315 UAH, of which salaries accounted for only 83 097 UAH, and more than half a million UAH was humbly and honestly specified in "Other income".

The origin of this amount Rychkova explained in the comment to the "Ukrainian truth" September 9, 2016.

According to her, 1.6 million UAH in the Declaration — the amount that  the Bank forgave her as a debt for a credit apartment, and considered her as income.

"Thus, the amount specified in the Declaration is the money that the Bank forgave for me ", — explained Rychkova.