Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 23/05/2023
The video of the empty stands, featuring the announcement of the matches to be played “in memory of the 300,000 fallen soldiers”, did not come from the Football Association of Ukraine.
On May 15, 2023, a video of the announcement of football matches was published on a channel on the Telegram social network, which was allegedly published by the Football Association of Ukraine. The video was published with a description that, among other things, states:
The Kyiv Football Association inadvertently gave away a “secret” by announcing football matches in memory of the 300,000 killed in the Ukro-Reich.
Furthermore, the post states that the Ukrainian Secretary of National Security and Defense, Aleksij Danilov, previously rejected the allegations that 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
Photo: screenshot
The 19-second video appears to be a screenshot of another video, which was allegedly posted on the YouTube platform in the form of a Shorts video by a channel called @uafukraine. In the video, the inscriptions in the Ukrainian language change, stating that the announced three matches of Ukrainian clubs in June this year will be played in front of empty stands, “for 300 thousand heroes who died for Ukraine”. The same video with the same claims was published on May 15, 2023, on other social networks (1, 2, 3).
What are the facts?
In the mentioned posts, it is claimed that this video was published by the “Kyiv Football Association”. Such an association does not exist, and “Kyiv” probably refers to the Ukrainian football association. The YouTube channel of the Football Association of Ukraine (Ukrainskaja assotsiatsija futbola – UAF) has the same name and channel image as the channel that allegedly posted the disputed video (@uafukraine).
On the official channel of the Football Association of Ukraine, however, at the time of writing this analysis, there was no recording of such content available. Such a video cannot be found either on the official website of the Association or on the social networks used by the Football Association of Ukraine (1, 2, 3). Additionally, on these pages, it is not possible to find any other announcement of matches that will be played in front of empty stands in honour of the fallen fighters.
The Ukrainian fact-checking web portal StopFake dealt with this claim in an analysis published on May 17, 2023. As explained in the analysis, this statement is not correct. This was confirmed to StopFake by the association itself.
We also sent a query to the Football Association of Ukraine, and received an official denial of the Russian media report about “announcing matches in memory of 300,000 fallen soldiers”.
“This is false information, which does not correspond to reality, it is a Russian provocation. It was not published by any official source of the UAF”, announced the Association
StopFake’s analysis also pointed out that the word “fallen”, used in the video, is not commonly used in that context in the Ukrainian language. As they emphasize, the dates mentioned in the video as the dates of the three announced matches are not in accordance with the official schedule of matches in the Ukrainian Premier League. One of the matches, as they note, has already been played and these teams should not meet again this season, while the other two are scheduled for other dates, not the ones listed in the video.
Finally, there are no official confirmations about how many soldiers, as well as civilian victims, have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion (1, 2).
Given all the facts, we rate the first publication of the claim suggesting that the Football Association of Ukraine or Kyiv announced matches “in memory of the 300,000 killed in the Ukro-Reich” as fake news. Other posts of the same claim are rated as the distribution of fake news.
