Venezuela’s Telesur television station aired a story on February 19 about children affected by two years of war in the Donbas region. Telesur used UNICEF data as its source and went on to quote UNICEF Ukraine representative Giovanna Barberis, who allegedly accused Kyiv of aggression against Donetsk and Luhansk.
“Despite the tension in the region and Kyiv’s aggressive military strength against the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, UNICEF has provided psychological support to more than 45 thousand children and trained 5 thousand teachers and psychologists to help spot depression among children”, reports Telesur.
The statistics Telesur used in the story are accurate and correspond to information that UNICEF published on February 19.
However, Giovanna Barberis said nothing about Kyiv aggression neither in the February 19 press release nor in the press briefing that she conducted on that day.
StopFake asked UNICEF to respond to the Telesur claim to which the UN organization’s Ukraine office responded that such statements “do not correspond to reality”. UNICEF also provided StopFake with the full text of the February 19 press release and the complete audio recording of Giovanna Barberis’ press briefing.
https://soundcloud.com/stopfake-news/gva-briefing-ukraine-unicef/s-d83Ez
