Bad actors know that factchecking sites are a vital democratic tool – that’s why they’ve launched their own dishonest versions
Asked by sociologists about his views on the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a Russian in his early 70s shifted the conversation to the massacre in Bucha – one of the worst atrocities committed by the Russian military in Ukraine. Evidence of Russian war crimes was fake, he said: “Take Busha or Bucha or wherever it may be. The way they filmed it, the way the bodies were arranged: it was clearly a fake!”
Two things stand out from this. He parroted, word for word, statements of Russian propaganda about bodies being actors “arranged on the ground”, echoing the claims of War on Fakes, the Kremlin’s imitation of a factchecking organisation. Yet despite his certainty, he did not know anything about the town, to the extent that he could not pronounce its name correctly. Relying on an “anti-fake” outlet modelled on western factchecking, he was not interested in facts but rather in shielding Russia from accusations.
Maxim Alyukov is a political sociologist
