FAKE: There is a document of the operational plan "Storm" of the "Azov" regiment, which confirms the pro-russian views of the city's residents

FAKE: There is a document of the operational plan “Storm” of the “Azov” regiment, which confirms the pro-russian views of the city’s residents

16 June 2022
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Verification within Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program

A photo of an allegedly official document of the “Azov” regiment with the “Storm” operational plan is being distributed online. The document refers to preparations for hostilities in Mariupol and its suburbs and states that 70% of the local population has pro-russian views.

However, this is a fake. The document has been fabricated, it contains a number of errors in proper names, punctuation marks and spelling of words.

Photo of the document

First of all, according to the law of Ukraine “On State Secrets”, the secrecy stamp of documents must correspond to the degree of secrecy of the information contained in it and be marked with three possible options: “Special importance”, “Top secret” or “Secret”. The document, which was distributed by the russian mass media, is marked “Secretly”.

Secondly, there are a number of errors in the document, here are some examples:

  • an extra comma before the word “такий” in the sentence «Найбільш небезпечний курс розвитку подій для наших угрупувань, такий при якому … »;
  • absence of a comma before “який” in the sentence «… а з півдня противником,який зможе зайняти оборону по місцю…»;
  • the use of “підготовити” instead of “підготувати” in the sentence «..потрібно заздалегідь виставити коректувальників вогню і підготовити артилерійські системи..»;
  • writing the conjunction “щоб” separately and not having a comma before it in the sentence «Для того що б нівелювати можливість»; 
  • the word “про російськи” is written incorrectly in the sentence «Населення налаштоване про російськи в 70% випадків».

The former names of settlements are also used, some of them are written with errors:

  • the document says Oktyabr’ (instead of Oktyabr), but in 2016 the village was renamed to Verkhnyoshirokivske;
  • the text also says Kominteronovo (instead of Kominternove), but in 2016 the village was renamed Pikuzy.

A large number of such errors in the document indicates that the document has been forged.

Attention

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