The Russian attack on Poltava on September 3, 2024, which killed 58 and injured 328 people after a missile hit the city’s Military Institute of Communication, was followed by a massive Russian disinformation campaign.
This time, propagandists “discovered” not only foreign mercenaries (you can check out our debunking of one of the ways they’ve tried to push this narrative here) but also invented Ukrainian school children who were forced to donate blood for “Swedish colleagues of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).” Our fact-checking department has debunked this claim.
What happened?
On September 3, propagandist Telegram channels, in particular Olesia Losieva (“Олеся Лосева”), Medved (“Медведь”), Kostian Kot (“Кот Костян – официальный канал”), and others that systematically spread Russian propaganda made a post saying that after Russian missile attack on Poltava, a lot of Swedish military instructors have been injured. Supposedly because of that, authors wrote, school students who aren’t even 18 yet have been forced to go to the hospital and donate blood for foreign mercenaries.
“After “Iskander” hit [the city], a lot of injured foreign (Swedish) instructors appeared in Poltava. And… they got to the children. They made entire groups of school children come to hospitals, and they aren’t even 18, they can’t become donors. Doctors are outraged because they have to bring fainting children to consciousness. So, the snot [assumedly the derogatory term for Ukrainian government/Ukrainians — ed.] uses children’s blood to treat Swedish mercenaries,” the posts in Telegram channels say.
This post was also shared by Russian media, in particular Vecherniaya Moskva (Вечерняя Москва), Argumenty i Fakty (Аргументы и Факты), and others, as well as by users in Х, VKontakte, and by Russian web-portals.
As evidence, the post offers pictures that seem to be taken from the Facebook page of Viktoria Omelianenko, dated Sept 3, in which she is supposedly frustrated about the following:
“Friends, I haven’t seen anything like this before! Right now, everyone knows that there isn’t enough blood because there are lots of injured. And the military command found the solution here. They got school children to come to our hospital to [donate blood]. Forcibly, of course, I am not sure that the parents knew about it at all. No one among them reached 18, of course. I respect Swedish colleagues who, along with our defenders, protect Ukrainian land. But there are rules! Children under 18 shouldn’t donate blood! Everyone knows about that! Okay, you don’t think about children, think about doctors! What are we supposed to do, care for every teen who passes out after donation? That’s all we are going to do then [helping children regain consciousness], [instead of] treating soldiers!”
Analysis
After the attack on Poltava, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that a Russian missile attack killed 40 people and injured 180 (the rescue operation hasn’t been finished yet at the time he made the address—and at least three people injured in the attack died in the hospital.)
Such a huge number of killed and injured is explained by the short interval between the time people heard the air raid alarm and the missile strike. The attack caught people in the moment of evacuation to the shelter. The rescue operation continued for three days.
First of all, we’ve checked the information about the need for blood donation for those who have been injured in Poltava. We found out that during September 3-4, the hospital’s needs for blood were fully met because a lot of people went to donate blood to Poltava station for blood transfusion. Its head doctor, Volodymyr Rudikov, told Suspilne, Ukraine’s state media, that on September 3, over 150 donors came to donate blood. Next time, even more people came, which is how hospitals and other healthcare institutions managed to get enough blood necessary to treat people.
“If usually, about 50 donors come to us per day, and about as many donate blood to our mobile brigades, then yesterday 150–170 people donated blood, and tomorrow, I think, we’ll have up to 200 donors. Apart from that, our mobile brigades are working. We are one hundred percent meeting the requirements for blood for our injured,” Volodymyr Rudikov said on September 4.
Mass voluntary blood donation in Poltava means that any claims about Ukraine’s military or government “forcing” people to donate blood physically or psychologically are false.
For the next step, we’ve found Viktoria Omelianenko, a person who supposedly complained about the military forcing children to donate blood, on Facebook. Her only post is the repost of the publication from Poltava’s Red Cross page with a call to donate blood at the address of Shevchenko St., 23. No information corresponding to the post shared by pro-Russian channels has been found.
Viktoria Omelianenko is a people’s deputy of the Kobeliatska territorial hromada (community) of Poltava Oblast. She collaborates with Red Cross Ukraine’s charity and helps them organize activities in her community (1, 2, 3, 4)
We wrote to her to ask if she published the information shared by Telegram channels. She answered that it was a fake post. She doesn’t live in Poltava and wasn’t there on September 3, and she found out about the need for blood donations on that day from social media. On September 3, she was providing internally displaced people in Kobeliaky with humanitarian aid from the Red Cross, which can be confirmed via charity documentation.
So, pro-Russian telegram channels used the original screenshot from a Facebook page and tampered with it, adding fake messages to it. They spread it within their disinformation campaign aimed to discredit Ukraine’s healthcare system, its government, and its military command.
Conclusion: Fake
Read more
- Debunking Russian fakes. No, instructors from Sweden weren’t killed in Russian missile attack on Poltava
Subscribe to news from Kharkiv, Ukraine
Most important stories from the frontline region
