#StopFake Top Fakes of the Week about Ukraine

Fake #1: Barack Obama Accuses Ukrainian Authorities of Genocide

On September 23, Russia’n internet media posted false reports claiming that U.S. President Barack Obama had “accused Ukrainian authorities of the genocide of their own people” in a speech to a business roundtable. They cited CNN as their source.

They quoted Barack Obama as saying: “With the inability and unwillingness of Ukrainian authorities to improve things, their actions make the conditions of all the population considerably worse and can’t be called anything other than the genocide of their own people.”

The news was published on such websites as oppps.ru (http://oppps.ru/cnn-barak-obama-obvinil-vlasti-ukrainy-v-genocide-sobstvennogo-naroda.html), hollivizor.ru (http://hollivizor.ru/), jakos.net (http://www.jacos.net/ru/novosti/cnn-barak-obama-obvinil-vlasti-ukraini-v-genotside-sobstvennogo-naroda-89495), postsover.ru and on social networks.

Indeed, Barack Obama did speak at a business roundtable on September 16 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/16/remarks-president-business-roundtable), though these reports with the reference to genocide appeared almost a full week after the event. In reality, there is no reference to Ukraine in his speech, and CNN made no such reports (http://edition.cnn.com/search/?text=obama+ukraine).

Fake #2: Russian Media Lied about Ukrainian Election Violations

Russian media falsely reported that the 2015 Ukrainian local elections saw a record number of violations. They cited the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a non-governmental organization that had registered violations during the Ukrainian elections, as their source.

This news was reported by the Russian television network NTV (http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/1555937), Rossiyskaya Gazeta (http://www.rg.ru/2015/10/26/narusheniya-site-anons.html), zavtra.ru (http://zavtra.ru/content/view/vyiboryi-na-ukraine-pobili-rekord-po-kolichestvu-narushenij/) and EurAsia Daily websites (https://eadaily.com/news/2015/10/25/nyneshnie-ukrainskie-vybory-byut-vse-rekordy-po-narusheniyam).

The Committee of Voters of Ukraine (http://www.cvu.org.ua/), however, did not register a record number of violations during the Ukrainian elections on 25 October 2015. Its Deputy Executive Director Vitaliy Teslenko have said that compared to the 2010 local elections, there were approximately 2.5 times fewer violations in 2015.

“More than 3,800 violations were registered on the day of elections in 2010,” he said. “Then we had only 2,500 observers. Now, in 2015, we had 4,300 observers, but they detected far less violations [1,500]”.

This is confirmed in the organization’s published report on the elections: “Comparing with the 2010 local election, the number of bribery of voters is far less.” (http://issuu.com/8612157/docs/____________________________________4e93f1fd74586b?e=16898265/30946110)

Original link: www.stopfake.org/en/news