FAKE: Ukrainian men abroad bought all the tickets from Europe due to new MFA restrictions

The Russians are once again trying to discredit Ukrainian refugees. They are spreading a story allegedly from the Indian channel WION about how 93% of male Ukrainian refugees bought tickets from Europe to India, Laos, Vietnam, and other Asian countries. The Booking service recorded increased demand for tickets on April 23, 2024. 

The video claims that the rush was due to the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issuing an order that men abroad could only obtain documents in Ukraine. In the video, Macarena Saez, Executive Director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, emphasizes that this is not a new wave of migration. Instead, men supposedly want to “wait out” 2-3 months until the war ends and the current Ukrainian government changes.

However, this is fake. The WION channel did not publish this report; the Russians edited the video from unrelated clips.

In reality, the WION channel did not publish such a video. We did not find it on any of the channel’s social media pages or website. The Booking service also did not report this. Moreover, the Booking service has never reported increased demand for tickets in any country. 

The Russians edited the footage from unrelated videos to promote several favorable narratives. For example, the video of Macarena Saez, Executive Director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, was taken from her interview with El Mostrador in 2023. In the recording, she talked about women’s rights worldwide, including abortion rights, not about Ukrainian refugees. Furthermore, the fake creators presented Saez as the Director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, a position she held until 2021.

The part of the video where a girl is sitting with the company name Booking visible on the screen was also cut from another clip. A reverse search on Google Images did not yield results, so we used the banned in Ukraine “Yandex.Photo“. The propagandists took part of the video from a 2022 report by the Russian channel “NTV”.

Other clips, such as the speech by Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, were also taken from open sources.

The main narrative that the Russians are trying to promote with this video is that Ukraine “does not care” about refugees, “restricts” them, forcing them to “flee”. Specifically, propagandists manipulate the topic of issuing passports to men abroad. From April 23, 2024, a Cabinet of Ministers resolution came into effect, according to which men aged 18 to 60 can only obtain documents in Ukraine. This concerns the Ukrainian citizen passport and the passport for traveling abroad. At the same time, these restrictions do not apply to those exempt from military service. For example, the new regulation does not apply to persons with disabilities, parents of children with disabilities, victims of Russian actions who went abroad for treatment, etc. 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine also clarified that all applications for passport issuance submitted before April 23 will be processed by consular offices.