They lived in an abandoned house in a forest next to a small village. They survived on mushrooms and berries. And it took months after the Russian army withdrew before Ukrainian police could finally arrest them.
Or so the story went.
At least four Ukrainian news outlets and countless people on social media repeated the story of six abandoned Russian soldiers last week. It turned out to be unfounded, but it was the last vivid example of how war rumors – and possibly propaganda – were spreading rapidly in Ukraine.
Vitaliy Romas, a former mayor of Dernivka, a village just east of the Ukrainian capital Kiev where the soldiers are believed to have been holed up, said he received more than 30 calls in one day. Police, the military, journalists and people just curious called to inquire about the alleged capture of the six Russians, he said.
Similar stories of Russians left behind are doing the rounds across the country. In one case, a Russian would live in a root cellar and eat only pickles for months. In another, a group of soldiers apparently became so brutal that they started a fight in a village and were arrested by the police.
While seemingly harmless, such stories may have their roots in Russian propaganda, according to analysts who monitor Russia’s disinformation campaigns in Ukraine, spreading fear and distracting the police to investigate them. “There is a technology for spreading petty fakes in the form of rumours,” said Andriy Shapovalov, the acting head of the Center for Combating Disinformation at Ukraine’s National Security Council.
The main feature of such rumors is the lack of a specific source of information. When people hear a story on the street, they are usually unaware that it may have been coordinated and planted, Shapovalov said. In fact, spreading rumors about buses or subways has been one approach during the years-long Russian conflict in eastern Ukraine, Shapovalov said, part of Moscow’s “hybrid war” approach, which used a mix of military, political and informational operations.
“In the circumstances of the hybrid war, which has been going on in Ukraine for more than eight years, it is normal to doubt everything,” Shapovalov said.
The story of the captured soldiers reverberated quickly. A Ukrainian publication cited a Facebook post as the source. People discussed it online and in private conversations. Iryna Prianyshnykova, a spokeswoman for the Kiev region police, confirmed the story was fake.
She said police regularly look into such fake stories and contact the news media to try to stop their spread. “Such stories are not only aimed at the police so that we have more unnecessary work,” said Ms Prianyshnykova, “but mainly at people, to create tension.”
In the village of Dernivka, people said they had heard nothing about Russian soldiers hiding under them. The village has only 450 people and they all know each other. “People should think better,” said Mr Romas. “We are a small village. We know every empty house – no one could hide here.”