The Russian invasion of Ukraine is leaving more hoaxes than any other issue since it began on February 24. Social networks have been filled with invented stories that are intermingled with other true ones and only create confusion and misinformation. While, the ukrainian press keep reporting on the war up to the minute, highlighting above all the achievements of the Ukrainian army against the occupation troops. What is surprising is the treatment of the russian presswhere the conflict opens newspapers, yes, but they quickly focus on less dramatic issues, such as Impossible leisure plans right now in Ukraine. While the Ukrainian media speak of bombs, destruction, exiles and deaths, the Russian press has no complex in inserting questions about an invasion that for them is something else with information such as “What to do in Moscow next weekend” or “Discover 13 signs of stress“. If the Russians are stressed, how will the Ukrainians be? If only they could consider something other than defending themselves against the brutal incursions of the invading troops.
Among all the hoaxes that are emerging is on Twitter, Facebook and of course, on the Russian Telegram network, this one that talks about “hospital de Mariupol“, of a “biological weapons laboratory” inside and a call from Vladimir Putin the former president of the United States Donald Trump. There is at least one short version and one longer version, and both are just as false:
“In the Putin’s Wednesday call to Trumpthe first reported that the Mariupol hospital bombed by the Russian army contained a biological weapons laboratorywithout any security measures, which housed strains of smallpox, ebola and plague. Putin would have warned of the attack to Zelensky a day in advance, but the Ukrainian president refused to evacuate, which would have saved four lives. The attack was carried out with thermal weapons because it is the only way to destroy pathogens. “If we had wanted to attack the civilian population, we would have used another type of more indiscriminate weaponry,” Putin would have told Trump“.
Now it turns out that the culprit for the attack on the Mariupol hospital and the loss of “four lives” is the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who did not heed the alleged warning of those who are invading his country. This threat of “biological weapons” is quite reminiscent of resorting to non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” in other times and in different contexts. In both cases it is science fiction.
This publication, which seems to come from Telegram, where it has penetrated the most is on Twitter. There it leads to another account on that social network which, in turn, leads to an Internet page, created in English on the WordPress platform, called Real Raw News (Raw Real News) and includes a information with this title: “Putin: Bombed Hospital Was Really a Bioweapons Storage Facility”.
They then develop the theme and mention that “the stories of the Russian military indiscriminately bombing a maternity ward full of civilians and pregnant women are exaggerated or outright inaccurate”, and they put it into the mouth of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the context of “a Wednesday night phone call with Donald Trump.” Among other strange things present on the page, there is this one in which Putin is the one who mentions that the hospital housed a “biological weapons warehouse” and also tells Trump about it. But they don’t put in quotation marks the alleged declarations of the Russian president or anything because why, if this “entertainment” page already warns that it is a site that only “contains humor, parody and satire”. That is to say, they have invented the news because it is what they usually do on that site with all of them.
What they do or, rather, what a single person does. And it is that all the writing of this satirical publication is composed by a man, who also admits it without problems: “Real Raw News is owned and operated by Michael Baxter, a former mainstream journalist and former English teacher“. All the texts are written by this Baxter, who also asks for donations and must be happy with life after one of the last creations he has imagined has come so far on social networks.
His page is quite seedy, but it can be credible for those who want to swallow what he says. The truth is there is no record of Putin speaking to Trump either “on the Wednesday call” or any other day recently, a fact that would also be absurd to say the least. It doesn’t make any sense that the Russian president, who is full and in full invasion, calls someone who is no longer from the United States to justify a military action.
It is the Ukrainians who have been denouncing the most that they are attacked with illegal weapons. Russia attacked the Mariupol mother-child hospital on March 9, as it has done with other health centers, but at no time has Putin or anyone on the Russian side spoken of a “biological weapons laboratory” there. . But it does not matter, this news, although it comes from a page that warns that it is “satirical”, convinces as it is in certain forums.
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