Russia plans smear campaign to discredit Ukraine in exchanges

This was reported by the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine.

One of the first deputy heads of the Kremlin administration is coordinating the actions of Russian officials and the operational involvement of state-controlled media. The goal of the campaign is to provoke dissatisfaction among Ukrainians—especially military personnel and their families—sow distrust in the government, and create an image of Ukraine as an unreliable partner on the international stage.

Russian-language propagandists—from Simonyan and Solovyov to so-called war correspondents and bloggers—are actively operating in the information space. They produce emotionally manipulative content, distort facts, and accuse Ukraine of deliberately delaying the exchange process, the intelligence emphasized.

The campaign has also been joined by European pro-Russian media outlets, including Hungary’s Magyar Nemzet and Magyar Hírlap, the Czech site CZ24.news, Slovakia’s Jednotné Slovensko, and France’s Réseau International. Their task is to spread narratives discrediting Ukraine, including false claims that Ukraine refuses to accept the bodies of fallen soldiers.

The culmination of this information operation is planned for the end of the exchange process, around June 20. At that time, Russia plans to distribute fake lists of allegedly identified deceased Ukrainians in order to spark public outrage and shift the blame for war-related tragedies onto the Ukrainian government.

• On Monday, June 16, the final stage of the body exchange between Ukraine and Russia took place, in accordance with agreements reached in Istanbul. As part of the exchange, Ukraine recovered another 1,245 bodies, including those of servicemen.