Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 12/04/2022
Most of the decisions of the Montenegrin authorities concerning the help to Ukraine and its people, who have been victims of the Russian military invasion for more than a month, have caused a revolt among some Montenegrins who do not hide that they are in favor of Russia.
One of these is the recent decision of the Government to redirect the funds that will be spent on the reception of Ukrainian refugees in Montenegro.
The topic was discussed on Facebook, and the information itself was interpreted in a manipulative way to point out that the Government allegedly paid two million euros to Ukraine.
“Our government paid two million euros to help Ukraine, I appeal to all our citizens to help the HOLY RUSSIAN FEDERATION! Everyone is born to die once; honor and disgrace live forever”, states the post of the profile called “Njegos Urbani”.
Although the news about the “two million euros to help Ukraine” provoked sharp reactions from pro-Russian citizens, this is not true.
Namely, at the Government’s session held on March 31, a decision was made to form a Coordination body to supervise the implementation of the decision to grant temporary protection to people from Ukraine.
Montenegrin media also wrote about this, so the website RTCG, in an article entitled “For the protection of refugees from Ukraine, two million euros”, pointed to the Government’s decision to allocate two million euros to implement the decision on granting temporary protection to people from Ukraine.
“In this regard, the Government approved the redirection of funds from the spending unit of the Ministry of Finance and Social Welfare to the spending unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the amount of up to 2,000,000 euros for the implementation of the decision on granting temporary protection to people from Ukraine”.
The website Standard shared the same information.
Inspecting the official document of this decision published on the website of the Government of Montenegro, as well as the texts of the websites RTCG and Standard, we can conclude that the amount of two million euros was not paid to Ukraine but will be forwarded to the Coordination body of the Montenegrin MUP, which will deal with the reception and care of Ukrainian refugees in Montenegro.
When it comes to sending financial aid to Ukraine, it is known that the Ministry of Finance approved 50,000 euros of aid to Ukraine from the budget at the beginning of March.
Taking into account all of these facts, we can conclude that an inaccurate and manipulative claim was made in the Facebook post suggesting that the Government of Montenegro paid two million euros to Ukraine. We assess the post to be a manipulation of the facts.
The “manipulation of facts” rating is given to a media report that uses known and accurate facts, but interprets them in a misleading way. These reports generally use accurate information to draw inaccurate conclusions or claims, thus misleading media content consumers in relation to the actual meaning of the facts presented.