Texty.org.ua under attack from the biggest disinformation Telegram channel in Ukraine

We denounce this campaign of lies and pressure against our publication, editors, and journalists. We expect further lies and manipulation regarding our editorial office and individual members of our team or their relatives.

Repeating Russian narratives

"Trukha" claims that "The publication of Texty.org.ua got caught up in an international scandal, blew its US grant funding, and disgraced Ukrainian journalism."

This refers to the study "Roller Coaster. From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it" about who opposes support for Ukraine in the US and why and how these arguments echo key narratives of Russian disinformation.

This study, published in early June 2024, was highly praised by the international community of media professionals and disinformation researchers. It also received considerable criticism from those featured in it, who have been observed systematically repeating Russian propaganda narratives about Ukraine.

In its Telegram channel post, "Trukha" reproduces a fragment of this information attack. They illustrated it with a publication on the website of the Ron Paul Institute, an organization that also consistently takes a pro-Russian position in explaining the causes of the Russian-Ukrainian war and in searching for its culprits. The Ron Paul Institute even puts the word "president" in quotation marks when referring to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, hinting at his illegitimacy, as insisted by the Russian authorities.

The accusations and allegations made by the subjects of the study against the Texty.org.ua team were immediately verified and refuted by Newsweek.

Texty.org.ua's statement about pressure on freedom of speech was supported by numerous Ukrainian and international media and civil society organizations, including Reporters Without Borders, a global network of investigative journalists that brings together more than 250 investigative media and civil society organizations in about a hundred countries around the world.

Interestingly, "Trukha" defends American politicians and oligarchs such as Elon Musk, who has repeatedly made highly manipulative public statements against Ukraine, and JD Vance, who attacked Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.

Although earlier, "Trukha" itself wrote about these figures in a negative light.

Harassment of the editor-in-chief of Texty.org.ua

In another post, "Trukha" resorted to personal insults and harassment of Texty.org.ua editor-in-chief Roman Kulchynskyy and his wife, publishing their photos taken from their personal social media pages and links to these pages with a call to write hateful messages to them.

Who we are

Texty.org.ua is a Ukrainian media outlet founded in 2010. Our research on current topics, based on the analysis of large data sets and visualization, is known far beyond Ukraine.

Our work has repeatedly been nominated and won international professional competitions.

This year, for the third time in our history, we received the most prestigious award in the field of data journalism, the Sigma Awards. And (how ironic!) it was for our research on the manipulative nature of Ukrainian Telegram channels.

"Trukha", by the way, also appears in this study, as 45% of the posts published during the study period contained various types of manipulation.

You can find examples of our data journalism work here.

Previous attacks

This is not the first time that Texty.org.ua, which devotes a significant part of its publications to countering Russian disinformation, has been the target of information attacks.

In March of this year, a supporter of the pro-Russian presidential candidate in Romania, Kelina Georgescu, claimed that we were connected to the state and were calling for the cancellation of the Romanian elections. Elon Musk and Anatoliy Shariy quickly shared her post. Read more about it here.

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