On 2 July 2017, a Russian web resource reported that Vadym Chernysh, Minister of the Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons, had allegedly written a letter to Yuriy Stets, Minister of Information Policy of Ukraine, calling for discrediting ‘holiday in Crimea’ by using Ukrainian mass media.
The site also published a scanned copy of the pseudo-document with Mr Chernysh’s forged signature, citing a blog by Oleksii Zhuravko, a former MP from the Regions Party who fled Ukraine in 2014.
The Ministry of the Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons of Ukraine and the Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine officially state that the letter with the indicated reference number does not exist and is dated 28 June 2017, when there was a holiday in Ukraine. In addition, the published ‘document’ does not contain the necessary requisites, with its reference number handwritten, whereas in official correspondence between ministries reference number are assigned to letters automatically, via the electronic system of document processing. That being said, the published letter is a gross fake, which was thrown in on the Internet to disinform residents of, first of all, Crimea and the rest of Ukrainian citizens.
May we also stress that the Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine does not have any ‘worked-out mechanisms of covering issues in an appropriate manner by trusted mass media and bloggers’ at disposal. In addition, the Ministry has no botfarms, which has been reiterated by Minister Yuriy Stets. The Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine is guided in its activity solely by the principles of freedom of speech and unacceptance of interference with mass media’s editorial policy.
Sadly, Ukrainian mass media took part in the dissemination of the fake, which has taken place more than once during the past four years and is indicative of the active interference of Russian agents with Ukraine’s information space and their using Ukrainian mass media for their own purposes. The Russian Federation has systematically been using a vast bulk of non-military instruments in its confrontation with Ukraine, that is, waging hybrid warfare, wherein the information field is practically the most crucial.
We call on Ukrainian mass media to use in the course of their work only reliable sources, which will prevent them from being used in the information warfare of the aggressor State against Ukraine.