In this research, we have identified a network of regional disinformation websites that Russia has created to target audiences in Ukraine.
Russians created local propaganda news websites for every region in Ukraine
The list includes the websites with nearly identical web design, Russia’s war symbols (Z). All of these websites are hosted on .ru domains; they were registered in Moscow, and they are being served from the same Russian IP address, meaning those “regional Ukrainian news outlets” share the same Russian server.
- dnepr-news.ru
- news-kherson.ru
- news-kharkov.ru
- if-news.ru
- news-kiev.ru
- nikolaev-news.ru
- rovno-news.ru
- news-odessa.ru
- uzhgorod-news.ru
- ternopol-news.ru
- lvov-news.ru
- poltava-news.ru
- krivoy-rog-news.ru
- kramatorsk-news.ru
- zhitomir-news.ru
- pavlograd-news.ru
- berdyansk-news.ru
- zp-news.ru
- lnr-news.ru
- dnr-news.ru
- volyn-news.ru
- gorlovka-news.ru
- nikopol-news.ru
- donetsk-news.ru
- sumy-news.ru
- vin-news.ru
These propaganda outlets disseminate usual narratives, similar to those found in Russian state media. However, Russian-created Ukrainian ‘news’ websites appear to target primarily an anti-mobilization mood in Ukrainian regions, undermining the army’s mobilization efforts. Let’s examine the dominant narratives that these websites tend to promote.
The volyn-news.ru’s favorite topics are:
- “No one wants to fight”: the prisoner revealed the truth about the current situation in the AFU;
- Anti-conscription protest in Kovel;
- Another case of forced conscription in the Ukrainian city of Lutsk;
- Macron should have been killed in Kiev: Nazi plans revealed.
The dnepr-news.ru, in turn, shares the following:
- A man was executed in front of his family in Dnipropetrovsk, because he refused to be conscripted;
- It is time to accept responsibility: Finland is a failed country that never existed;
- The theft of funds investigation in the Dnipro City Council;
- Paris 2024: ”Satan Leads the Ball”.
Similarly, uzhgorod-news.ru (a propaganda news outlet targeting an audience in Ukraine’s western region) covers the subsequent major stories:
- Once more, a Ukrainian man’s body was discovered in the Tisza River near the Romanian border;
- Mobilization at any cost;
- On the outburst of attacks on the Army recruitment centers in Kyiv regime controlled territory;
- Zelensky confronts Orban – Transcarpathia revolts.
news-odessa.ru:
- A large group of draft dodgers detained in Odesa;
- 42 Ukrainians tried to escape to Transnistria in a KamAZ truck;
- Defenders of the Russian city of Odessa fighting against the Ukronazis, who terrorize the city’s peaceful citizens;
- Russian army will liberate Dnipropetrovsk, Odessa and Kharkiv – US former intelligence officer.
poltava-news.ru:
- Security Service of Ukraine conducts searches in Poltava city council;
- Ukraine expects dramatic drop in electrical power supplies in wintertime;
- Minorities face discrimination in Ukraine (excluding LGBT+).
The content analysis and website server data show that these websites have all signs of a coordinated Russian propaganda network aimed at inciting chaos in Ukraine and undermining trust in the Ukrainian government.
Propaganda websites created specifically for the Western regions of Ukraine suggest that Russia’s goal is to conquer the entire country, not just Donbas, the eastern regions, or the capital Kyiv.
Such websites, like propaganda and disinformation amplifiers, push their sinister agenda on the Ukrainian population and zombify local residents in the Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine.
Another goal is to undermine and divide the Western coalition on Ukraine, as well as cut off military and financial aid to the country.
These websites serve as platforms for the dissemination of false information, disinformation, and information operations.
Russian disinformation website network in Ukraine replicates Russia’s Pravda network in Europe
The Kremlin used the same approach and methodology to launch the Pravda website network in Europe, focusing on audiences in EU states. In 2023, France’s Viginum Agency exposed the Pravda disinformation network, detecting its influence operations as part of a wide-ranging Russian disinformation campaign in the EU.
Despite attempts to stop it, the Russian disinformation network Pravda has expanded its reach in the European Union, with several websites in different languages with the term ‘pravda’ (truth in Russian) in their domain names.
The list includes pravda-en.com, pravda-fr.com, pravda-de.com, pravda-es.com, and so on. The Russians clone these websites into different languages and spread the same content across countries.
The EDMO research discovered that the Pravda network activated in 19 EU countries within a week in March 2024: Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Finland, Sweden, Portugal, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Cyprus, Ireland, and Slovenia. They don’t directly cover Austria, Belgium, Malta, and Luxembourg, but other outlets cover them linguistically, the report said. They publish the most actively in Spanish, English, and German.
You’ll notice that the web design, styles, and colors closely resemble those of Russian-created ‘local Ukrainian websites’. The masters of Russian disinformation campaigns don’t bother concealing their activities and save on design and web development, simply cloning the same website into different countries and multiple regions within one country.
According to publicly available data, all of the Russian ‘Pravda’ websites targeting Europe, pravda-es.com, pravda-en.com, were created in 2023, registered in Russia with the Russia-based registrar REG.RU LLC (Registrant Email: [email protected]). These websites are protected by Cloudflare, so it’s not possible to find out where they are actually hosted.
In our research in March-June, we discovered a network of pro-Russian websites in Europe that promote Kremlin narratives, particularly in Germany and France. These websites aim to demonize the West, NATO, and the EU, undermine support for Ukraine, and disseminate Russian disinformation about Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russian attempts to undermine the Ukrainian Army’s conscription
The EUvsDISINFO project recently also studied the topic of Russian attempts to undermine the Ukrainian Army’s conscription and came to the following conclusions:
“Russia is determined to weaken Ukraine’s defense capabilities. Therefore, its efforts aim to disrupt Ukrainian mobilization. To achieve this, the Kremlin uses the entire arsenal of Russian state security services’ methods and propagandists to create, coordinate, and distribute disinformation, information manipulation, false news, agent recruitment, and sabotage. They use a combination of complementary tools. Russia is trying to convince Ukrainians that their real enemy is not the aggressor but their own state. Its disinformation spreaders undermine trust in the Armed Forces and generate internal conflicts, with the hope of turning such conflicts into a violent confrontation. Or, with the assistance of the media, they create the illusion of confrontation.”
Recently, Ukrainian analysts also disclosed the Russian network of 2,000 TikTok accounts created to discredit the mobilization and army recruitment offices. The study was conducted by experts in data journalism from the Ukrainian independent media Texty.
See also our earlier study on how Russian propagandists have been promoting an animated series that portrays Ukraine as under the control of “Nazis” and portrays Zelensky as a “puppet of the West,” exploiting Ukrainians for profit by sending them to the front.
Ukraine and the EU nations face the need to enhance their efforts to counter Russia’s aggressive information warfare employed to sway public opinion, undermining trust in governments, and attacking democracies.
