This video, like Kateryna Levchenko’s quote, is fabricated by propagandists.
A video is being circulated in the pro-Russian segment of the network with claims that thanks to sex workers from Ukraine, 100,000 people in Poland alone have switched to pro-Ukrainian views. This is allegedly reported by the opposition Russian publication DOXA. The video also quotes the government’s Commissioner for Gender Policy Kateryna Levchenko, who allegedly called the phenomenon «pink propaganda» and called on Ukrainian sex workers abroad to continue promoting pro-Ukrainian ideas to their clients.
However, this video, like the claims in it, is another fabrication of Russian propaganda. In fact, the Russian media DOXA did not release such a video. Interestingly, in their fakes, propagandists previously mainly referenced credible foreign sources, but now they have borrowed the logo of the opposition source DOXA: this project describes itself as «an independent media outlet against war, dictatorship, and inequality». The propagandists even made an effort to recreate the style of the publication and used gender-neutral wording typical of DOXA’s texts in the video. No Ukrainian media outlet has published such a quote from Kateryna Levchenko, and such statements have not been made in her official communication channels.
In addition, the fact that this news is fake is also indicated by the aforementioned statistics, according to which in Poland «100,000 men in a year and a half switched to pro-Ukrainian views thanks to the work of sex workers» — it is unclear where such data could have come from, and the number sounds unrealistic.
The purpose of such fakes is to humiliate Ukrainian migrants who are forced to stay abroad and accuse them of «degrading» sex work. This is not the first time Russia has spread such narratives. We recently debunked a fake on the same topic in the article Fake: Ukrainians in Sweden Forced to Resort to Sex Work, Infect Locals with HIV.
