Stand with Ukraine

The video was first published back in March on Zelenskyy’s own Instagram page, but the video the pro-Kremlin channel posted last week showed a white powder on the desk next to the Ukrainian president.

“We don’t know whether it was editing or just Zelensky’s [sic] cameraman was also on drugs and missed such a moment in the frame,” the text accompanying the video said.

A side-by-side analysis of the two videos clearly shows that the white power has been added in afterwards, and several fact checking organizations have debunked the video.

One such organization video was the Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications, which described the fake video as “very primitive,” but the researchers pointed out that because Russians have been fed a diet of almost non-stop disinformation about the war in Ukraine for the last two months, they have been primed to believe everything they hear.

More than 25,000 Russian soldiers have died since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, according to an intercepted phone call made by one soldier.

Ukraine’s Security Service on Wednesday released a recording of an intercepted phone call where one Russian soldier was heard discussing the loss they suffered since the war began on Feb. 24.

“So many of our boys have been f**king killed, for f**k’s sake. One thing is what they say officially, but I’ll tell you: 25,900 killed. This is during the f**king 2 months…” the soldier told his friend.

“The brigade commander [general’s position] got hit,” he added.

In another intercepted call published Tuesday, Russian soldiers were heard refuting a story that claimed they have successfully captured the Ukrainian town of Rubizhne. The soldier also admitted that Ukrainian troops made even elite Russian units “suffer.”

“I was also told that they said on TV that Rubezhnoye had been taken. We haven’t taken f***ing anything! We’re standing at the same site,” the soldier said. “Russian ‘spetsnaz’ [special forces] came here… They also got f***ing beaten a bit, last night.”

Ukrainian refugees who reluctantly find themselves under Moscow’s rule are receiving help from an unlikely quarter: networks of Russian volunteers helping those displaced by the war to leave Russia.

When Bogdan Goncharov, his wife and 7-year-old daughter fled the shelling in their hometown of Mariupol in mid-March, they ended up in Russian-controlled territory in south eastern Ukraine. Fearful of being transported thousands of kilometres away after hearing other refugees were sent to Siberia, Goncharov said he contacted a Russian volunteer who arranged transport for them across Russia to the Estonian border.