Debunking Russian fakes. No, instructors from Sweden weren’t killed in Russian missile attack on Poltava

On September 3, 2024, Russia hit an educational facility, Poltava’s Military Institute of Communications, with a missile strike, killing at least 55 people and injuring 271. The next day, the Russian Ministry of Defence said that Russia launched a precision strike on an educational training center where, under the guidance of foreign instructors, soldiers were learning different military specialties and training. 

Then, Russian propagandists “supported” this theory and spread the news that the Russian missile strike had supposedly killed military instructors from Sweden. Our fact-check department investigated this claim.

What happened? 

News about Swedish military instructors being killed during a Russian airstrike on the Military Institute of Communication in Poltava spread through Telegram.

As evidence basis for this news, the authors of the post shared a screenshot of a post from Britta Ellwanger’s Facebook page, in which she supposedly wrote that her school friend they’ve studied together with in Linköping University was killed in a Russian strike at Poltava. 

Britta Ellwanger, according to this post, wrote, “Today in Poltava my close friend died, we studied together at Linköping University. Friends from the military volunteers said that the guys would hardly have been able to escape such a strong blow. They had been helping the Ukrainian guys for several months already… Rest in peace, darling. I don’t know how many of ours exactly died, but we will always remember you guys…” 

Anonymous Telegram channels “SOLOVIOV” (СОЛОВЬЁВ, archive), “Medved” (Медведь, archive), “Myr sehodniewith Yurii Podoliak” (Мир сегодня с “Юрий Подоляка, archive), Colonelcassad (archive), “Pridnetstrovets” (Приднестровец, archives), “Ukraine.ru” (Ukraina.ru, archive), and other channels that are included in Cyberdepartment of Ukraine’s Security State Security Service (SBU) in “List of tools for spreading adversarial disinformation.” 

The news also appeared in Russian press News92 (archive) and Tsargrad (Царьград, archive) and on X @Alisa_Vasilisa_(archive), @Zlatti_71 (archive), @vicktop55 (archive).

Analysis

First, we have checked the personal Facebook page of Britta Ellwanger, the “author” of the propagandists’ post. Her name and the main photo match, but we didn’t find a post about the death of her friend in Poltava.

According to the information on Britta Ellwanger’s page, she worked as a project director for the charity fund ForPEACE. The information about education says that she graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and is currently studying at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. 

Note that there’s no mention of Britta Ellwanger ever studying at the Linköping University in Sweden, which is mentioned in the propagandist’s post. 

For the next step, we analyzed the supposed volunteer’s message and found an inconsistency in terms of the number of dead people mentioned. 

In the second part of the post, the death of one “close friend” of the volunteer (“my close friend died”) is mentioned. In the next two sentences, they write about two dead already (the guys, they). At the end of the post, the singular form is used (“darling”), and in the next sentence, again, plural (“guys”). 

Britta Elwanger also debunked the “news” of her having written the post about the death of Swedish military instructors in Poltava. 

So, we have another fake from Russian propaganda that aims to excuse Russia’s war crimes on Ukraine’s territory using the narrative about “NATO soldiers” who fight against the Russian Federation. 

Conclusion: Fake 

Author: Victoria Horak 

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