Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 08/04/2022
Dozens of media presented the claims of Russian institutions as facts, thus suggesting that the soldiers of this country found evidence that Kyiv planned an offensive on Donbas in March 2022.
In recent weeks, dozens of websites in the region had reported that Russia’s defense ministry had released documents allegedly found by Russian troops in Ukraine, claiming to “prove” that the Ukrainian government planned an offensive in Donbas just before Russia launched the invasion.
In our speaking area, this news was initially published by the website Telegraf on March 9, 2022. Although most of the media that shared this article cited Sputnik as a source, the article published on Telegraf, according to publicly available information, was published a few minutes earlier than on Sputnik.
Numerous media outlets in the region, including Telegraf, have made it clear that these claims were made by Russian officials both in the headlines and in the reports (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
Some websites from BiH, on the other hand, treated the claims of the Russian Ministry of Defense as verified facts in the titles of their articles, sharing them without any deviation, stating that they were claims of the Russian Ministry:
Kyiv PREPARED OFFENSIVE IN DONBAS IN MARCH (Srna)
Ukraine prepared a military operation in Donbas in March (Virtualna Hercegovina)
Some websites in Serbia and Montenegro presented the claims of Russian institutions in the same way:
However, such articles emphasize that these are claims of Russian officials.
On March 11, 2022, the “conspiracy” website Logicno published an article suggesting that Russian officials’ claims are a fact. This website, unlike other media, does not cite or mention the statement of the Russian Ministry, but explicitly states that the documents published by the Russian Ministry of Defense are “proof that Ukraine was preparing an attack on Donbas”:
This is proof that Ukraine was preparing an attack on Donbas – Everything was planned before the Russian attack
If a conflict is inevitable, then attack first – they claim that this is Putin’s saying, which he demonstrated by attacking Ukraine. He struck first, and documents seized by the Russian military and released by the Russian Defense Ministry prove that Ukraine was preparing an attack on Donbas in March this year.
According to the plan of the Ukrainians and their instigators from the West, the attack would provoke Russia to intervene in the war, after which the West would still declare the same sanctions as now, only then, Russia would be in a defensive position, and the whole game would be led by the Ukrainian army with their helpers.
Putin attacked first and made all of Ukraine’s and the plans of their whisperers vanish into thin air. Those who claim that Putin has been preparing for this attack for 20 years are probably right, but only in part related to the showdown with the West. However, for the very moment of the attack, Putin decided even before the Ukrainians spread the war maps on the tables of the command in “London”.
This website also published photos of documents that allegedly prove that Ukraine was planning an offensive. It is also interesting that some media shared photographs of published documents, and some did not.
What are the facts?
On March 9, 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have found documents proving that Kyiv was preparing to conduct an offensive operation in Donbas in March 2022.
Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian institutions and officials have proved to be an extremely unreliable source of information on the events happening on the field and have so far made many inaccurate and unverified claims to justify the occupation of Ukraine.
Therefore, it is important to emphasize that from the point of view of the media, first of all, it is irresponsible to share information exclusively from Russian official sources and without any deviation, verification of their accuracy, critical questioning, or questioning in any way, present them as facts.
The document on the alleged offensive contains an order from the commander of the National Guard of Ukraine, Mykola Balan, sent to the chiefs of the Northern Kyiv, Southern Odesa and Western Territorial Administration of the National Guard of Ukraine and commanders of three military units in late January this year.
On March 9, 2022, the Ukrainian website StopFake published an article in which, citing a source from the National Guard of Ukraine, it claims that the disputed documents do not mention the “Donbas offensive” at all. The National Guard told StopFake that the document is not secret and that it deals with military exercises that were supposed to take place near Lviv:
As the National Guard explained to StopFake, the document, first of all, is not a secret.
“In the secret business, there is a different registration procedure, there must be a stamp, and no one signs the back of the secret documentation”, a representative of the National Guard told StopFake.
Secondly, the document has nothing to do with Donbas.
“This is a standard order for holding regular joint training of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Guard in Starici (Lviv region). Such orders are issued regularly every year. This document refers to the organization of a training camp”, confirmed the National Guard for StopFake.
The National Guard of Ukraine also pointed out that the order does not mention any offensive targets.
“This document has nothing to do with planning an offensive operation. It is obvious that the plan of the offensive operation must envisage the presence of some specific targets that are not in the document. This is not an order to march to a position in the JFO zone, followed by an offensive. This is an order to conduct combat coordination in the Lviv region”, the National Guard reported.
Our partner fact-checking website Faktograf, in the analysis from March 28, 2022, also dealt with the claims that the found documents prove that Kyiv planned the attack on Donbas. To write the analysis, Faktograf published an integral version of the Croatian translation of the document. Based on it, it concluded that the Russian side exaggerated the importance of the document and that the Ukrainian side used inadequate arguments to explain what the document represents.
On the first page of the document, it is written that it is a “secret”. For the purpose of writing the analysis, Faktograf contacted Igor Tabak, an analyst at the defense and security website Obris.org.
Tabak explained that practically every military document that deals with the composition and deployment of military forces is secret.
Namely, on the first page, it is stated on two occasions that it is a secret.
Furthermore, the order to the Director of the Regime-Secret Department of the Main Directorate of the National Guard of Ukraine instructs “to organize the protection of state secrets during the preparation and execution of measures in places of combat (special) tasks in accordance with the requirements of the Procedure for ensuring the protection of state secrets in military administration”.
According to their analysis, the region of Donbas is also mentioned several times. Although StopFake stated that the document refers to holding military exercises near Lviv, Faktograf stated that, although accurate, this is not complete information because it is clear from the document that the soldiers will go to the front in the east of the country, i.e., to Donbas.
Donbas is mentioned already on the second page of the document as part of the purpose of the order. The order itself refers to the organization of the preparation of the tactical battle group of the 4th Operational Brigade for the execution of combat (special) tasks in the Joint Forces operation within the Armed Forces of Ukraine “with the aim of performing tasks defined by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from January 19, 2022. No. 39/304/78/1 and with the aim of strengthening the capacity of the groups of joint forces on the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions”.
It is important to note that the armed conflict between the Ukrainian forces and the ranks of the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, located in the Ukrainian region of Donbas, has lasted since 2014 and killed 14,000 people by February 2022. According to Faktograf, this explains why soldiers are training for actions in parts of the country that are believed to have been occupied by rebels.
However, the real purpose of training Ukrainian guardsmen before sending them to Donbas remains unknown. It is hidden in the order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from January 19, 2022, no. 39/304/78/1, which is mentioned in these documents, but does not mention its exact content, states Faktograf in the analysis.
“We don’t know the purpose, the location of the action, or the duration. It says so in the order. We know that they have been preparing for a month, which is not strange considering the level of human and other potential”, states Tabak.
In other words, it is not known why the guardsmen should have been sent to Donbas and what they should have done there.
However, that does not mean that the Ukrainian army was preparing to carry out an “offensive on Donbas in March”, as Russian officials claim. In the document itself, the “offensive” is not mentioned anywhere. It is clear from the translation of the document published by Faktograf that no date in March is mentioned anywhere.
In essence, the only thing the published document proves is that an order has been issued according to which Ukrainian guardsmen should take part in a military exercise and then go to Donbas. What is the purpose of their departure remains unknown.
Finally, Tabak concludes that the documents are probably not relevant to offensive planning:
The context in which this triage of the Guards and the formation of the group takes place, according to him, can have two possible explanations, in which there is no place for the offensive. One is the accumulation of Russian forces along the Ukrainian border, visible since the summer and completed at least a month before this order. The second is staff rotation.
The Joint Forces operation has existed since 2018, and the confrontation with the separatists from 2014 to 2018 was called the “Anti-Terrorist Operation” (ATO), Tabak recalls, emphasizing that the war in Ukraine did not really start on February 24, 2022.
“The level of conflict all these years – even when taking into account the armistice – has been stronger than some active phases of the Homeland War. And that in terms of exchanging artillery fire and relocating armored units. It is quite an active battlefield. It was somewhat calmer compared to 2014 and 2015, and this happening now, but these are serious wars “, reminds Tabak.
In such a situation, the rotation of soldiers at the front is necessary.
So, the documents published by Russian officials are not “proof” that Kyiv planned an offensive on Donbas in March 2022.
Tabak explained to Faktograf why he believes that the Ukrainian army did not deny the Russian claims by stating the complete facts but used incomplete and partly untrue arguments:
“To deny this, we would have to publish broader orders that are also classified and higher rank. Since these are the foundations of Ukraine’s defense both before the intensification of this war and today in its current fierce phase, this is not realistic to expect even in the best of circumstances”, Tabak said, concluding that the war had grown into a very serious operation and defense.
Articles in which titles omit the fact that the claims about the “evidence” that Kyiv planned the offensive on Donbas in March are in fact official statements of the Russian Ministry of Defense, which are thus presented as facts, are assessed as manipulation of facts.
We assess Logucno’s article, which explicitly claims that the documents found by Russian soldiers are proof that Kyiv planned the attack on Donbas without quoting and providing statements, as fake news. We assess all transmissions of this article as distribution of fake news.
