Czech social media users fall for anti-Ukrainian explanation of child crime video: How to recognize disinformation online

Some social media users are alleging the boy is Ukrainian and that his behavior just confirms the allegedly typical behavior of all Ukrainians, who are allegedly aggressive and attacking people with knives in the Czech Republic on a daily basis. Is the allegation true?

That explanation of this incident is false – the video was filmed in the city of Arkhangelsk in northern Russia. Let’s take a look at this example to see how one can verify the validity of such content.

Finding facts and verifying them: Google, Google, Google

The first thing I did to verify the source of this video was to take several still images from it and simply start searching for them online with the aid of the Google search engine. The Google Lens feature makes it possible for us to find images and photographs that are the same as or similar to another, as well as to learn more about the different objects shown in those images.

To double-check an image, you first find an article featuring the photograph or video and see what the information accompanying it says. You can either upload the image to the service directly or input its online address.

In this case, I uploaded a still image from the video and managed to find two sources where similar photographs are available. The first source was in English, a text on the news server Russia Today reporting on the incident in the video.

That first source should give us pause. While the news server’s name might seem familiar, it has nothing to do with the Russian television news network RT (previously Russia Today), headquartered in Moscow and financed by the Russian state.

If we try to find out information about who the publisher of this “Russia Today” is, no contact information is listed anywhere on the website, which is not a good sign. The other link to the image leads to the Russian social media service Vkontakte, which is not a reliable source.

The article on “Russia Today”, the author of which is listed as “Mike”, links to the original source for the story, an article on news server Gazeta.ru in Russian, which links to more detailed information on the news server 29.ru. Gazeta.ru is a Russian news server headquartered in Moscow that has been owned by the state-run company Sberbank since 2020.

Neither of those articles report that the boy in the video is Ukrainian. On the contrary, “Russia Today” uses the headline: “Shocking Moment Young Russian Child Wielding Knife Threatens Passersby In Street”.

“This is the shocking moment a young boy wielding a knife threatens passersby in the street in Russia and repeatedly thrusts the sharp blade at them,” the article begins. Elsewhere it states: “Local media reported it was not the first time the unnamed boy had threatened people near the Northern (Arctic) Federal University library, in the city of Arkhangelsk, northern Russia.”

The articles on the two other Russian-language servers about the incident repeat this same information.

Where was the video filmed?

So, at this point I have ascertained where the media are reporting that this incident transpired. However, to be sure, we can also verify that claim.

Once again, I used Google. Their service Google Maps offers the Street View feature, which shows a photograph of any location they have visited.

The video of the boy shows several buildings, but the main feature is the bridge he is near. Using Google maps, we should be able to easily find whether such a bridge is near the university.

The pillars of the bridge have certain unmistakable features, so using Street View, we should be able to identify it unequivocally. I find the North (Arctic) Federal University in Arkhangelsk on the map quite easily and there is a bridge near it, so I then try using the Street View feature, and on my second attempt I find the place where the video was filmed.

The street is called Prospekt Lomonosova and it is intersected by the Severodvinský Bridge. The photograph of that bridge on Street View has the same pillars as the bridge in the video and the surroundings are also the same.

I can now unequivocally say that this incident transpired in the city of Arkhangelsk, Russia, not in Ukraine, and not in any other European city, as some comments posted to the video online have indicated. From the articles in Russian, I learn that the media reported on this boy once before when he was captured on video smoking and bothering girls as they walked past.

We have the facts, but those discussing online don’t care

Having found this information, I added it to the comments section underneath the video published by a Czech-language social media user named Hrabě Václav (“Count Václav”). I also used it to respond to a genuinely very vulgar comment attacking all Ukrainians in response to the video.

It was interesting to follow the reactions of those who made the vulgar attacks to my debunking of their assumption that the boy in the video is Ukrainian. Their responses show that it is never enough just to refute disinformation with accurate information.

The quotes below have not been edited, so the grammatical and other errors are original to their authors. [Translator’s Note: We will not attempt to duplicate the grammatical errors in English].

“This is what [Czech Interior Minister] Rakušan is supporting here and all of [Czech Prime Minister] Fiala’s Band of Mafiosi. Wasn’t Hitler his great-grandfather??? His mother supports him in this. She’s filming him, the cretin, he’s a cretin from childhood. He’s growing up to be a criminal,” one commentary states.

I will probably never get to hear what this person thinks Fiala and Rakušan have to do with this boy in northern Russia, but the implication is that he is Ukrainian (like those given temporary protection in the Czech Republic). The “commentator” does not respond to my explanation of the video.

“What is this poet trying to say??? Already also in Slovakia, in Bohemia, but mainly in western countries this is an absolutely common situation!!!!!!!!!” I learn from another reaction to my information.

I do my best to explain that the video is from Russia, in vain. “What do you expect?” writes another, adding the Ukrainian Azov Brigade’s previous Nazi-related symbols to the comment because he has already made up his mind.

“You Ukrainian fucker, where is your mother who is raising you so badly, go back to Ukraine you drug- addicted shits,” another comment reads, so I respond with my explanation of the video. The author responds that it doesn’t matter whether the boy is Russian or Ukrainian.

I then ask why she is so vulgarly attacking Ukrainians in particular, if it doesn’t matter, and whether, since she now knows this is not a video of a Ukrainian, she won’t change her comment or delete it. Her reply is disarming: “I’m just writing my own opinion here, whether about this video or not. Ukraine can simply go to hell, we will never let them take our country.”

In other words, she’s just writing her opinion and no facts will persuade her to change it.

So what if it’s in Russia? He’s a Ukrainian, that’s how they talk

Another reaction to my explanation of the video was that while it may be from Russia, the little boy is still a Ukrainian. “Do you speak Russian? It doesn’t matter where it transpired, the language heard there is not Russian,” writes another commentator, and others support him, writing in: “That’s true. They’re Ukes.”

“They accepted a couple million of them here too and gave them aid. The backlash is to be expected. The mess of that war, too, is from those who assisted them with feathering their nests in Russia. 70 % of the Uke nation are subversives,” another commentator writes – and it’s probably not worthwhile looking for any logic in such statements.

The online discussers’ minds are made up. Even if some will admit that this video is from Russia (some will never admit it and accuse me of inventing this, because there are a lot of bridges in the world which they claim look just like that one…), they continue to assert that the boy in the video is Ukrainian because they believe the voices in the video are Ukrainian.

I ask a native speaker of Russian, Marie Potapovová, who is currently working for the Romodrom organization, to listen to the voices and give me her opinion. “The youth and the girls are speaking Russian in the video. The boy is mostly using vulgar swear words, I could only catch a few ‘normal’ words, but the girls are genuinely responding in Russian,” she told news server Romea.cz.

“Aside from the fact that many Ukrainian people, especially in eastern Ukraine, speak Russian as their main language, this incident happened in a Russian city where the vast majority of the population is Russian, so it is quite unlikely this youth is Ukrainian,” Potapovová surmises. However, for those defeated on the battlefield of the information war, this is naturally no argument at all.

Those people say they continue to believe that in Arkhangelsk in northern Russia, a Ukrainian boy, not even 10 years old by the look of him, is walking around using a knife to assault local Russian men and women. Again, we won’t find any logic there no matter how long we look for it.

Can the dissemination of hate be punished?

The vast majority of hundreds of comments posted in response to this video vulgarly abuse Ukrainians, writing that they are allegedly “born violent”, and we also learn from these comments that the “Fiala Government” is somehow responsible for this fact. These comments opine that Ukrainians should be murdered, that this boy should be drowned, or kicked to death, etc.

This hate was unequivocally sparked by the description accompanying the video authored by the person who uploaded it to social media. He gave it this caption and hashtags: “crazy Ukrainian kid #kid #ukraine #crazy #funny #lol #fyb #rerl.”

Is that a crime? “According to the circumstances of the case, a person who consciously disseminates content that is able to incite grievances against a group in the population can be criminally liable,” the director of the In IUSTITIA organization, attorney Klára Kalibová, tells Romea.cz.

“The people supporting violence against a group in the population because of their nationality are then always responsible for expressing such support,” Kalibová said. In other words, if the disseminator of hate, the trigger of such hatred, is smart about how he does it, then it will be hard to prosecute him.

Intention is the key to all hate crime, and police have to know how to prove it. I decidedly will not advise people here on how to defend themselves in such a situation.

Naturally, it is easier to prosecute those who are not taking the time to think about what they write and who are basically themselves the victims of this disinformation being disseminated in the first place. All we have to do is to look at the comments mentioned above.

The examples I have given here are all already unequivocally criminal. It is also not news that those who trigger such hate are hard to prosecute here.

Let’s recall the case of the politician Tomio Okamura and the first person ever to be convicted of terrorism in the Czech Republic, his follower, a pensioner named Balda. Which of them ended up in court, and which of them is in prison?

So, I have described the dissemination and impact of just one of the many pieces of disinformation out there on social media – what conclusions do I draw? That it is quite easy to find correct information, to ascertain the facts, and then to publish them.

However, what is not easy – and what seems to be all but impossible in recent months – is to persuade those vulgarly abusing an entire group in the population that the video they are cursing over has actually misled them. These people mistake their own opinions for facts, they believe what confirms their opinions and nothing else, they do not believe in the existing system – and that lack of trust drives their tendency to believe nonsense.