The French NGO for the protection of journalistic rights «Reporters Without Borders» did not release such a video, and the information in it is not true.
A video clip allegedly created by Reporters Without Borders is being spread by pro-Russian sources: it claims that law enforcement agencies are mass-detaining and harshly interrogating Ukrainian citizens who contact Russian phone numbers or even search the Internet in Russian. The video provides «statistics» that in Sumy alone, as of early October, 56 criminal cases for collaborationism had allegedly been opened, and 27 people arrested on such charges had died from torture (it is noteworthy that for some reason the text of the publications mentions only 12 deaths — the propagandists got confused in their own fabrications).
However, Reporters Without Borders did not actually produce this video. We contacted the organization’s Head of Investigation, Arnaud Froger, who denied that the publication had published such a story. «This is the third case in the last few months where pro-Kremlin social media accounts have used the RSF brand and staff to lend credibility to their propaganda. They are using Western media outlets or NGOs like RSF to add value to their narrative and bridge the trust gap that their own propaganda outlets suffer from. With such disinformation, Russia and its affiliated trolls are manipulating what is at the heart of all human relationships: trust,» he commented.
Interestingly, the footage of Froger in the propaganda video is actually borrowed from a video where Reporters Without Borders debunks another Russian propaganda story about the massive use of Nazi symbols by Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk. We also refuted this disinformation in one of the previous stories.
Both communication with relatives in Russia and Russian-language queries on the network are absolutely legal and are not regulated in any way by the legislation of Ukraine. According to the Criminal Code, collaborative activities are considered to be:
- Actions aimed at denying armed aggression against Ukraine, public calls for support for the aggressor state, cooperation with the aggressor, its armed formations or the temporary administration.
- Voluntary occupation by a citizen of Ukraine of a position in illegal government bodies in the occupied territories.
- Carrying out propaganda activities in any educational institutions of Ukraine, the purpose of which is to promote armed aggression against the state.
- Transferring material resources to the armed formation of the aggressor or conducting economic activities in cooperation with the enemy.
- Participation in rallies, assemblies, demonstrations, as well as receiving, storing and distributing information aimed at supporting the aggressor state.
- Voluntary holding a position in illegal judicial or law enforcement bodies in temporarily occupied territories, participation in any paramilitary enemy formations.
Thus, none of these mention private communication with Russian citizens or using the Russian language online. At the same time, in the Russian Federation itself, residents are regularly detained and sentenced to long prison terms for any anti-war rhetoric or support for Ukraine, from comments on social networks to laying flowers at monuments to Ukrainian writers.
Read the refutation of yet another fake about the «authoritarian regime» of Ukraine in the article Fake: Ukrainian Students Forced to Write Poems Honoring Zelensky — Photo.
