Debunking Russian fakes. No, volunteers don’t evacuate Ukrainian soldiers from Russian Kursk Oblast for “a certain price” 

A post about Ukrainian volunteers evacuating injured Ukrainian soldiers from Kursk Oblast was shared on Telegram. Our fact-checking department looked into this post to find out if there is any truth to it. 

What happened? 

Authors of a Telegram channel called Ukrop fresh (“Укропский фреш,” archive), which is on the List of tools for spreading hostile disinformation assembled by Ukraine’s SBU and Center for Countering Disinformation, made the post that said that the leadership of 80th Air Assault Brigade, because of the lack of transportation options, stopped evacuation of soldiers from Russian Kursk Oblast.

As an alternative, authors said, volunteers offer paid transportation to Ukrainian soldiers. As evidence, the post provides a photo of two women who stand near the ambulance. Authors write: 

“…As usual, the enthusiastic “volunteers” popped up at once, who are always ready to help injured “defenders,” — for a certain price, of course. Now, Katia Yurko and Sasha Karnaukh (women volunteers in the photo) are riding the ambulance across the roads of Kursk Oblast and getting injured combatants to the hospital. There’s no evacuation in the 80th Air Assault Brigade now, only “market relations.” The prices range from 3,000 to 10,000 hryvnias per person,” the post says. 

Analysis

First of all, we’ve found the source of the photo of two women. This photo was shared by Oleksii Dmytrenko on his Facebook page. In the post from October  10, he spoke (archive) about the transportation of soldiers of the 80th brigade with a combat injury to a hospital in Lviv. He also thanked those who helped financially to organize this trip and make it completely free for a soldier. 

Oleksii Dmytrenko also mentions Katerina Yurko in the post (whom Telegram post also mentioned as a person who organized the “paid” evacuation of the injured soldiers from the Kursk Oblast.) 

We also checked Katerina Yurko’s Facebook page. On October 9, she posted (archive) about transporting an injured soldier of the 80th Air Assault Brigade from Kyiv to Lviv hospital. 

“The assignment is complete. The soldier was delivered to the Lviv hospitals!!! We’re tired today, outraged, because we’ve found out about a number of our injured fighters who wait for transportation from Kyiv to other places [where they can get treatment…],” Katerina wrote. 

We’ve analyzed Katerina Yurko’s other posts on Facebook. We’ve figured out that the ambulance that is present in the photo in the Telegram post belonged to a non-governmental organization called “Wizards of a Positive Right” (“Чарівниці позитивного права”), which Katerina is a director of. She talks about it in the post of October 8. 

In the same post, Katerina Yuko says that on this ambulance, they [she and her team of volunteers — ed.], for the first time, will transport a soldier of the 80th Air Assault Brigade from Kyiv to Lviv and ask to support their initiative, asking to donate for fuel for this transportation. 

Then, we wrote to Katerina Yurko to ask about the Telegram post about paid soldier evacuation. She told us that she and her team transport soldiers for free, not evacuates them. She also noted that they don’t organize such transportation from Kursk Oblast in Russia. 

After our call, Katerina Yurko also wrote a post in which she emphasized that the information about paid evacuation is fake and that Sasha Karnaukh, the other volunteer mentioned in a Telegram post, doesn’t exist. Karnaukh is actually the surname of one of the members of the volunteers’ team, Oleksii Karnaukh. 

So, the information about Ukrainian volunteers organizing the “paid evacuation” of injured soldiers from the Kursk Oblast in Russia is fake. Propagandists used a photo from a real volunteer organizing transportation of soldiers from Kyiv to Lviv financed by the people who donated to these volunteers. 

This is another attempt of Russian propaganda to discredit Ukrainian volunteers and promote the narrative that Ukrainian soldiers aren’t needed in their country. 

Conclusion: Fake 

Author: Vasylyna Haviak