In a village near Kiev, a crowd demanded the immediate release of those detained, and reports of the protest began to appear on social media platforms. One of the videos showed a boy wrapped in a blanket being led through a crowd of protesters. Entries appeared online suggesting that the 14-year-old was the youngest victim of torture in a "secret prison near Kiev."
These sensational reports were picked up by politicians, including: Confederation MP Konrad Berkowicz and the leader of the German AfD Alice Weidel, whose entry on the X platform gathered over a million views.
Who was the 14-year-old boy?
However, it quickly turned out that the reality was completely different. "The Kyiv Independent" journalist Francis Farell shared a recording showing a 14-year-old boy throwing bricks at the building and then entering its premises. The boy was not one of the detained soldiers, but appeared at the scene together with his colleagues. The head of the Ukrainian president's office, Kyrylo Budanov, who arrived at the scene, talked to the teenager. The boy allegedly told him that he came to the protest with his friends.
Fake lifeguard and broadcast on TikTok
Another element of the provocation was the presence of a woman pretending to be a paramedic. She arrived at the scene in an ambulance and broadcast the events live on TikTok, kneeling and begging the services to let her into the building so she could help the supposedly injured. The Ukrainian BBC portal determined that the woman was Valentyna Mołoda, who deals with plastic surgery on a daily basis. According to the police, she was the one who spread rumors about torture.
The head of the Ukrainian president's office revealed details of the woman's activities. All this has been documented. Later, during the interrogation - and currently further actions are being taken against this person - all these materials were found on his phone, Budanow said.
According to the findings, Mołoda purchased a rescue vehicle and reconnoitred the area at least three days before the event. Her actions were a planned provocation.
The scale of disinformation
The Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation confirmed that the event bore the hallmarks of a coordinated campaign with external interference. Within a short period of time, 361 identical posts on Facebook were detected, informing about the alleged detention of men.
"An ambulance arrived when called, but the owners of the building did not allow paramedics to enter. According to doctors, four people are in a critical condition. It is not known what exactly is happening," we read in one of the entries.
By 7 p.m. on Monday, as many as 110 Russian channels on Telegram were spreading narratives about a "concentration camp" near Kiev. The Russian embassy in the Netherlands also used disinformation, publishing the entry: "Are the Dutch happy that their money is spent on torture? Can you look this poor boy in the eye?"
What really happened in the building near Kiev?
According to the official message of the 1st Azov Corps on Telegram, the building was used as a temporary deployment site for newly mobilized soldiers whose documents were being processed before being sent to training centers. There were also soldiers there who had previously left their units without permission.
The Ukrainian website Slidstvo.Info spoke to veteran Maksym Onufriyenko, who visited the building and confirmed that there were no signs of a torture site there.
The Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Ivan Vyhivsky, announced that the circumstances of the incident were being investigated. "This building was used by soldiers of one of the units of the National Guard of Ukraine. On the same day (i.e. Monday), I ordered the initiation of an official investigation, within which all information will be verified, in particular regarding the conditions of the soldiers' stay," he wrote in the Telegram messenger.
Wyhwski also assured that the soldiers' families were allowed to contact their loved ones, and doctors and representatives of social organizations were allowed to enter the facility.
