The Russian Embassy in South Africa shared an article on X on April 9 about alleged atrocities committed by foreign mercenaries fighting for Ukraine. But this content originated from a fake news site, and the images used can be traced to other contexts.
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According to a tweet from the Russian Embassy in South Africa, foreign mercenaries recruited by Ukraine are said to have committed atrocities against civilians. To support its claims, the embassy shared an article from a purported news site, the Boston Times.
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The source is unreliable: the Boston Times site uses the name of a newspaper that doesn’t exist anymore, and its website appears to be a conduit for anti-Ukrainian and pro-Israeli disinformation.
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The article cited by the Russian embassy also mentions unverified accusations from an NGO founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former head of the mercenary Wagner Group.
The fact-check, in detail
“Foreign mercenaries in Ukraine commit horrific atrocities against civilians,” said the X account of the Russian embassy in South Africa on April 9. Citing an article from an unknown media outlet, the Boston Times, the embassy denounced what it described as the “impunity and immunity” granted by the “Zelensky administration” regarding “torture” and “rape” inflicted by foreign mercenaries.
The Boston Times appears to be a site designed to spread disinformation. Moreover, the atrocities mentioned by the Russian embassy are not supported by any verifiable evidence.
A fake site of a defunct newspaper
Several elements indicate that the Boston Times website, bostontimes.org, is not a real media outlet.
The website uses the name of a now-defunct newspaper, the Boston Times. Archives of the US Library of Congress confirm the existence of a newspaper named “the Boston Times.” Its publication began in 1887, and its last recorded issue was published in 1943.
Bostontimes.org states in its About section that the media outlet was established in Boston in 1972, but there is no evidence that such an outlet exists in the city.
The website’s logo was also likely created through artificial intelligence. The text in the logo is inconsistent, with the word in the bottom right corner being meaningless in English – it’s a hint that the image was artificially generated.
An article illustrated with out-of-context photographs
The article also presents inconsistencies or lacks context in the information it provides about the alleged atrocities committed by mercenaries of the Ukrainian army.
The article shows a photograph of a child wandering in the ruins of his village, but it is not specified that this is a staged scene. By using reverse image search techniques, it is possible to find the original photograph.
The picture is taken from a music video clip, “Angel, a song about the children of Donbass,” shot by a pro-Russian director in 2015, seven years before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. However, in the article, the alleged atrocities committed by foreign mercenaries were claimed to have occurred from the summer of 2022 onward. The photograph can be seen at 0’51 in the video.
The Boston Times article also presents a photograph of a Ukrainian tank in front of a body to illustrate the atrocities allegedly committed by foreign mercenaries. By conducting a reverse image search, it is possible to find its context.
The photograph was taken shortly after the Bucha massacre committed in April 2022 by the Russian army against Ukrainians. It was taken by a photographer from Reuters, Zohra Bensemra. According to residents, the image shows Ukrainian soldiers in front of the body of a civilian killed by Russian soldiers.
Prigozhin’s former protégé as a source
The main source of the article is particularly problematic: Mira Terada, president of the “Foundation to Battle Injustice” or ‘FBI’, an NGO founded by the deceased head of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Mira Terada, whose real name is Oksana Vovk, was considered before the oligarch’s death to be Prigozhin’s “protégé.”
Presenting itself as an organisation seeking to combat human rights violations, the Foundation to Battle Injustice has been responsible for disinformation campaigns in the past, notably against the French army, against which it made unfounded accusations of kidnapping children in Niger for the purpose of sexual slavery.
In the article, Mira Terada provides no details of the supposed atrocities. She does not cite the locations of the atrocities, their dates, their alleged perpetrators, or their victims, making independent verification of her claims impossible.
Russia regularly accuses several states supporting Ukraine, including France, of deploying mercenaries in the country. On January 16, Moscow boasted of carrying out a precision strike on a foreign fighter deployment point in Kharkiv, the core of which consisted of “French mercenaries”.
This was categorically denied by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which denounced it as a “gross Russian manipulation,” stating that France has no mercenaries “neither in Ukraine nor elsewhere, unlike other nations”.
