In the period between August 20 and September 7, 2022, a number of false and manipulative claims regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war, the NATO-Russia conflict and other related topics were made during the news and political programs of the Russian state television channels Russia 24 and Russia 1.
The Fact Investigation Platform made a summary of these statements.
Zelensky’s mansion was not rented to Russians
During the August 31 episode of the political talk show Evening with Vladimir Solovyov on the Russia 24 TV channel, anchor Vladimir Solovyov, referring to Italian sources, claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rents his mansion in Italy to Russians.
On August 30,2022, one of the Italian news outlets IL TIRRENO published an article with the headline “Zelensky’s mansion in Forte dei Marmi was rented to Russians.” According to the newspaper, the luxurious mansion of the president of Ukraine, located in the town of Forte dei Marmi in Italian Tuscany, was rented in August for 50,000 euros to a Russian couple working in London. The day after the publication, on August 31, in an interview with another Italian website – affariitaliani.it, the representative of the real estate agency that rents out Zelensky’s mansion denied this information.
Claudio Salvini, a representative of the Real Estate Forte dei Marmi Villas real estate agency, noted that Zelensky’s mansion was not rented by Russians. “I assure you, the couple who rented the house is not Russian: we have an absolute ban on renting the house to Russians and Ukrainians,” said the real estate agent.
And now I will show you where the attack was planned to be on Belarus
During the August 21 episode of the “News of the Week” news program of the Russia 1 TV channel, journalist Nikolai Dolgachov’s report from the front line was broadcast.
In the report, the journalist covering the military operations claimed that top-secret documents revealing the arranged attack of Ukraine and NATO on Russia and Belarus came into the possession of Russian intelligence.
The Russian initiative Fake News has discovered that the materials presented as secret documents are actually photographs and descriptions of radio-electronic intelligence systems (SIGINT, IMINT), as well as those of the Corona space program designed in 1959 by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the US Air Force.
Information about them is public and available even on Wikipedia.
Apart from this, during the report, claims were made that maps of the alleged military operation of the attack planned by NATO and Ukraine on Russia and Belarus came into the hands of the Russian side.
Whereas, the maps with place names and notes written in Russian were developed not by the North Atlantic Alliance, but by one of the Russian military analytical magazines.
Those maps are attached to an article titled “Strategic aerospace offensive operation of the NATO Allied Forces in the European theater of operations 1998-2002” (Стратегическая воздушно-космическая наступательная операция ОВВС НАТО на Европейском ТВД 1998-2002)published in May 2009.
The number of countries participating in “Army 2022” was not unprecedented
During the “News of the Week” news program aired on August 21, it was claimed that an unprecedented number of countries participated in the “Army 2022” military-technical exhibition.
The following was mentioned during the coverage of the forum: “ARMY- 2022 military-technical forum set a record this year: 80 foreign delegations participated. Nothing of this scale was recorded in the pre-sanction years. And now, when the masks are torn, when the NATO member states have openly disdained the forum, Russia’s allies have increased in number”.
Meanwhile, this claim is false: it is clearly stated on the official website of the military-technical exhibition that more foreign delegations participated in the forum in 2021 than in 2022.
Last year, the number of these delegations was 117, exceeding this year’s number almost by 40.