#DebunkingFakes

The Kiev regime continues to recycle its baseless accusations regarding “thousands of abducted Ukrainian children” to promote its false narratives. Although this claim has been debunked time and again, it is important to revisit the case and counter #fakes with #facts.

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In 2014, the Kiev regime that seized power through an unconstitutional and violent coup unleashed punitive operations against the residents of Donetsk and Lugansk (at the time – Ukrainian citizens) who rejected the nationalist forces that installed themselves in power. As early as April 2014, Ukraine's armed forces against the people of Donbass using armoured vehicles, aviation, artillery and rocket systems.

❗️ Thousands of civilians, including hundreds of children, became victims of indiscriminate attacks.

On June 2, 2017, the Alley of Angels memorial was unveiled in Donetsk in honour of the perished children. Back then, the memorial listed 66 names. Today, the number of young victims has already exceeded 300.

Kiev’s atrocities go beyond the killing of children – the regime even resorts to harassing minors online. The infamous “Myrotvorets” website – a public hit list run by Ukrainian neo-Nazi, which is still operational and and is hosted on Western servers, targets almost 400 children.

Among them is Platon Burchenkov – a toddler who will only turn... three years old in January 2026 is accused of “knowingly violating the state border”. Another example is Faina Savenkova – a young blogger from Lugansk, whose personal data was added to “Myrotvorets” when she was barely 12. Ukrainian radicals claim that the teenager “encroached upon the sovereignty” of the entire state.

⚡️ According to Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office, Ukrainian punitive actions have claimed 5,000 civilian lives and left over 13,500 wounded – among them 1,275 minors.

Nevertheless, in April 2023 Kiev began circulating the myth of “20,000 abducted Ukrainian children”. It was first promoted by Ukraine's Commissioner for Children’s Rights Daria Gerasimchuk and quickly amplified by Western mainstream media. The “19,546 deported kids” figure published by the Children of War portal was not backed by any lists, names or individual records.

The Russian side received an actual list of “abducted Ukrainian children” only in 2025 during resumed Russia-Ukraine direct talks in Istanbul. It contained only 339 names, showing that the number of children separated from their families on both sides had been grossly inflated for political PR.

A case-by-case review showed that a large share of those listed as “children” were actually adults who had already turned 18 when the special military operation started. Some were found legally residing in Russia with one of the parents, while over 100 were found in Germany – a revelation Ukraine quickly tried to hide.

Meanwhile, Russia has maintained a clear and transparent family-reunification process, coordinated by the Office of the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights. Since 2022, 122 children from 98 families have been reunited with parents or close relatives in Ukraine or third countries. 29 children have returned to Russia from Ukraine. All reunifications are verified and accompanied by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

‼️ Russia has never impeded the reunification of children with their families – and never will. 👉 This is our principled position.

#See4Yourself #Think4Yourself

💬 Russia's Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova:

Former The Guardian correspondent Saeed Kamali Dehghan has admitted that he fabricated a 2010 article presented as an “exclusive interview” with Iranian woman Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who had reportedly been sentenced to death by stoning.

The article appeared on the front page on August 6, 2010, triggering an international outcry: Western politicians demanded that the woman be freed, while Iran came under diplomatic pressure from several countries.

👉 Dehghan now admitted:

“I want to come clean about a front-page story I wrote for the Guardian.

It was presented as an exclusive interview with Sakineh Ashtiani. That interview never happened. I fabricated the entire piece. It was a false story – completely untrue – and I take full responsibility”.

The article is still available on The Guardian website without any relevant note or retraction.

The context here is important: the article appeared at a time of intense pressure on Iran – the same year, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1929, imposing what were then the toughest sanctions against the country.

The West needed an emotionally charged story to justify the sanctions regime. A woman sentenced to death by stoning was the perfect image. The story immediately spread across the global media and became an argument for those pushing for Iran’s isolation.

This is not the first time Saeed Kamali Dehghan has admitted that, while working for Western media outlets, he took part in anti-Iran propaganda campaigns. In 2020, he disavowed his involvement in HBO’s documentary For Neda, about the death of Neda Agha Soltan during the 2009 protests, saying that he had been “influenced by Western narratives”. The former contributor described the film, once held up as a landmark documentary about state violence, as anti-Iran propaganda.

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☝️ As for Western falsehoods, Dehghan’s admission is far from the first such revelation.

In October 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah appeared before a US Congressional caucus. In tears, she claimed that Iraqi soldiers had stormed Kuwaiti hospitals, removed babies from incubators and left them on the floor to die. President George H.W. Bush repeatedly cited her account. The story became one of the arguments used to build support for Operation Desert Storm.

Two years later, it emerged that Nayirah was the daughter of Kuwait’s Ambassador to the US and that her appearance had been orchestrated by PR agency Hill & Knowlton, hired by the Kuwaiti government in a multimillion-dollar campaign. The notorious incubator story was never substantiated. A child was made to tell a lie in order to help justify a war.

In 2003, The New York Times fired journalist Jayson Blair after it emerged that he had invented sources, fabricated quotes and entire reports, including stories written without ever leaving his New York apartment. Of 73 articles reviewed by the newspaper, 36 contained evidence of journalistic misconduct.

Stephen Glass of The New Republic fabricated 27 of the 41 articles he published between 1995 and 1998 – inventing characters and companies and even creating fake websites to deceive fact-checkers.

And, of course, there is the infamous “Powell's test tube” – a byword for Western deception used to justify aggression against a sovereign state.

Now the Saeed Kamali Dehghan case joins this inglorious list. 👉 It will certainly not be the last.

Shall we talk about Bucha next – and how the BBC helped spin that fake?

#DebunkingFakes