A gynecologist from Poltava saved 23 pregnant women in a village, while a soldier from Vinnytsia faces two years in the hospital: how misinformation affects people and its motives.

This morning, I opened my Facebook feed and immediately came across a striking message in black letters on a yellow background, drawing attention to the fact that 54-year-old Nikolai Danilyuk from the village of Nova Hreblya in the Kalynivka district of Vinnytsia region is hospitalized in the thoracic department after being injured. Below it was a plea to readers to share the post (highlighted in bold): "Let his loved ones know that he is alive."

We'll overlook the missing comma before "that." We'll also forgive the inaccurate name of the medical institution—there is no official name "Odessa Clinical Hospital." In Odessa, multiple hospitals hold clinical status: regional, several city hospitals, and one for railway transport. So, relatives have no idea where to call.

I couldn't identify the author of the post. It is known that the first announcement about the search for Nikolai Danilyuk appeared on the "Prayer" page back on December 28, 2022, but posts from that time are not displayed until March 2023. For reference, the page was created in March 2022, hence "during the war," and is filled with patriotic posts, announcements about missing persons, and fabricated stories aimed at eliciting tears or other emotions from readers, just to get them to like, comment, and share the post. As is known, the more of such content there is, the larger the author's audience reach becomes. Currently, the page has 224,000 followers. I’m not sure all of them checked its transparency, and if they did, they would see that it is managed from Armenia. However, this could just be a basic cover, and Russians might be behind the "Prayer" page.

The NotaEnota portal, which works to debunk fake news and false information circulating in the information space, notes that the "Prayer" page manages at least six groups with names like: "Search for the Missing 💙💛", "Ukraine Today", "Good Evening, We Are from Ukraine!", "Search for People During the War", "Strong Ukraine", and "Search for People/People Search". All these groups have a number of other moderators from Armenia, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. In some groups created by the "Prayer" page, other pages are promoted through administrators. For example, "Ukraine — Victory".

Thus, they gather information about our defenders, their relatives, and the last known communication details of the military. By the way, the "Prayer" page obtains information about Ukrainian soldiers from open sources, namely from the pages of relatives/friends of the soldiers.

What do the enemies do with this information? Surely, they use it for their interests. And deceived Ukrainians easily reveal the identities of those who have taken up the defense of the Motherland simply based on emotions.

Nikolai Danilyuk, whose relatives are being sought on Facebook, has long returned to his family

So, using the provided address of the injured man, "Telegraph" contacted the village head of Nova Hreblya in Vinnytsia region, Natalia Holovach.

– Yes, Nikolai Danilyuk is one of our residents, a father of many children, – she confirmed. — The man indeed fought, was injured, and received treatment in Odessa. After that, he returned to the front, was injured again, and was declared unfit for military service by the military medical commission. Now he lives with his family in the village.

According to Natalia, the message claiming that Nikolai Danilyuk is supposedly undergoing treatment in Odessa goes viral on Facebook approximately every six months. She says the village community refutes this information, drawing social media users' attention to the post's creation date and its outdatedness, but it seems someone intentionally promotes it at certain intervals.

The message I stumbled upon appeared in the news feed of my classmate. It was a repost from a man who presents himself on social media as a supporter of Kyiv's "Dynamo" with a diploma from Lviv Polytechnic. Honestly, I was horrified to see that this long-outdated information had been reposted by over 11,500 sympathetic but inattentive citizens. And each of them has several followers who do not think about what they are spreading.

As a result, by evening, a few more of my Facebook friends "threw" me the "news" on a yellow banner about the search for Nikolai Danilyuk's relatives.

It’s good that Nikolai returned from the war. But we don’t know how many similar stories could have different endings. Or even fabricated ones. This at least distracts those who come to social media to say or learn something important, to discuss various pressing issues.

In general, there is no logic in searching for the relatives of an injured soldier if his details, including residence address, are known. Doctors are unlikely to use social media for this. Not for two consecutive years. Doesn’t that sound absurd? Yet our careless people stubbornly continue to share such "old" news because they want to "help" the defender, believing they are doing him a favor.

People are even too lazy to read the comments that reveal the truth. It seems that many have been struck by some virus that destroyed critical thinking. Many are eager to quickly gather likes and spread unverified data on social media. This is exactly what such posts are designed for. Who will pay attention to the "release" date of the news?

Hero Doctor Shmonko with the Face of a Porn Actor

By the way, upon opening the profile of the man who spread the post about former Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier Nikolai Danilyuk, I discovered another typical bait that has recently flooded the Internet. Specifically, an artificially generated (AI) video of a soldier holding a half-empty plate with the caption: "Today is my Birthday, no cake, no flowers, and no one to congratulate me… just beets and potatoes. Next year at this time, I will be with my family."

Pictures of happy couples, twin birthday celebrants, and soldiers who received no congratulations on their personal celebrations—all of this is "fruit" from the same field, through which Russian propagandists gather data for conducting information psychological operations (IPSO) and disinformation campaigns.

Recently, enemy fake creators have been actively promoting "heroes of Ukraine that won’t be mentioned in the news."

Not long ago, a story circulated on social media from the account "Heroes of Our Time" about a brave young gynecologist, Alexander Shmonko, from the village of Lobkova Balka in Poltava region, who saved no less than 23 pregnant women at the cost of his own life during a fire in the local hospital.

It's a nice story, but it is entirely false. According to the 2001 census, only 59 people lived in that village of the former Khorol district, now Lubny district. Moreover, there has never been a maternity ward there.

However, the fabricated story gains a special "spiciness" with the photograph of American porn actor Johnny Sins, who was mistakenly identified by the fake creators as Alexander Shmonko.

I once again checked if there is a person with that name and surname in Poltava region, and the verification service found not a single one. By the way, only 74 people in Ukraine bear the surname Shmonko.

But if you think the propagandists' imagination has run out here, you are mistaken. They also fabricated that all the rescued mothers named their newborns after their savior—Alexandrs.

"Like and a low bow to the Hero," the creators of this fantasy plead. And of course, the followers have no delay in responding to this.

Meanwhile, according to data from the Center for Strategic Communications, the "Heroes of Our Time" account, which tells stories of Ukrainians who allegedly performed heroic deeds, has 39,000 followers, and its content sometimes garners 100-400 thousand views. Although the stories lack any specifics and logic, often without geographical ties, and the people have fictional surnames or none at all.

Such messages evoke strong emotions and stimulate people to react, allowing them to achieve massive reach and help promote pages or accounts.

Often, such texts, photos, and videos are spread by bots, whose goal is to create platforms for promoting manipulations. This can be dangerous, as destructive narratives beneficial to Russia are advanced through the gathered audience. Additionally, such pages may contain malicious links leading to fraudulent websites," the Center for Strategic Communications warns.