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Koncha-Zaspa is to blame for everything. How trolls and bots shift the blame for Russian attacks
"While we’re being bombed, Koncha-Zaspa is sleeping peacefully!! And that’s because they’ve MADE A DEAL. A DEAL, 100%," a bot wrote in a comment under a video of a Russian attack on Kyiv in early November 2024. The comment received 247 likes and sparked a heated discussion.
"When those at the top and those at the bottom are at odds, even a peaceful state will find itself in danger," reads the ancient Chinese treatise Guanzi (4th–1st centuries BC). Russia has fully embraced this idea, seeking to turn ordinary people against their country’s leaders whenever it launches a war. In its disinformation campaigns in Ukraine, Russia has been pushing this theme for years, ever since the occupation of Crimea. Over the years, we’ve seen various versions of the same narrative: from "Poroshenko was profiting from the war, so he kept it going" (when he was president) to "Zelenskyy needs the war because he doesn’t want elections".
Russian propagandists don’t simply push their messages head-on. Instead, they look for different ways to get inside Ukrainians’ heads and steer public sentiment in the direction they want. One such attempt revolves around the narrative that "Koncha-Zaspa isn’t being bombed". We take a closer look at how bots are spreading this claim across social media.
Shifting the blame
Why Koncha-Zaspa? Because the name itself carries certain connotations.
The southern outskirts of Kyiv along the Dnipro River, known as Koncha-Zaspa, have long been associated by Ukrainians, especially Kyiv residents, with political power, the elite, corruption, wealth, and social inequality.
Presidential and other state residences, gated private housing developments, and mansions belonging to politicians, officials, and oligarchs — including individuals implicated in corruption cases — stand alongside ordinary homes in the area. Propagandists equate Koncha-Zaspa with the Ukrainian authorities and exploit the resentment this association provokes, redirecting public anger inward rather than toward Russia after yet another Russian strike.
When ammunition depots exploded following Russian attacks near Kyiv, commenters suggested relocating them to Koncha-Zaspa. After apartment buildings were destroyed, they claimed that air defenses protected only the elite. During blackouts, they alleged that the area never lost electricity. Some suggested housing displaced people in the oligarchs’ empty mansions or allocating land there for the National Memorial.
Comments claiming that "Koncha-Zaspa residents don’t feel the war" and calls to strike the area appeared under almost every news report about civilians suffering from Russian attacks during the war.
We analyzed 13,687 YouTube comments mentioning Koncha-Zaspa. These comments appeared under 10,374 videos published by 90 Ukrainian socio-political channels. The data covers the period from February 24, 2022 to September 28, 2026.
How we identified narratives
Each comment was classified by OpenAI’s GPT-6 Luna language model. The model received the comment text, the video title for context, and a list of narratives with their definitions. We started with six narratives that we had identified manually based on examples from the comments. If none of them fit, the model proposed a new one. A more powerful model, GPT-6.1 Sol, then checked whether the proposed narrative duplicated an existing one and merged similar narratives. We subsequently reviewed all the proposed narratives and examples of comments manually, merging those that were similar in meaning.
GPT-6 Luna also identified the topic of each of the 10,374 videos based on its title, categorizing them into topics such as attacks on cities, power outages, and mobilization. We manually verified the video topics in the same way as the comment narratives.
How we identified bots
We define bots as accounts showing signs of automated or inauthentic behavior. We identified them using three metrics calculated across all YouTube comments posted during the study period (94.3 million comments), not just those mentioning Koncha-Zaspa. An account was classified as a bot if it met at least one of the following criteria:
- Rapid commenting: the account posted consecutive comments less than two minutes apart.
- Repetitive comments: the account posted identical comments under different videos. We counted accounts that reproduced at least half of their comments containing six or more words verbatim or with minor changes.
- Around-the-clock activity: the account posted comments for at least 12 hours within 24 hours.
Based on these criteria, 1,240 of the 8,296 accounts that mentioned Koncha-Zaspa in their comments were classified as bots. They posted 27% of all comments on the topic. Almost all met the first criterion (1,214 accounts), while 85 met the second and 59 met the third.
Is Koncha-Zaspa "untouched"?
According to our calculations, Koncha-Zaspa was mentioned at least 106 times in 2026 in Telegram monitoring channels that report the routes taken by Russian missiles and drones. Nearby Kozyn (an urban-type settlement in Kyiv Region), just a few kilometers away, was mentioned 178 times, while the town of Ukrainka, 15–20 km from Koncha-Zaspa, was mentioned at least 268 times.
In December 2022, debris from Russian drones fell on the territory of Dynamo Kyiv’s football training center in Koncha-Zaspa.
In May 2026, a house belonging to the children of Ukrainian MP Serhii Shakhov burned down there following a nighttime drone attack. It hardly seems that drones are deliberately avoiding the area.
At the same time, Koncha-Zaspa has indeed seen no massive destruction or frequent strikes. But other suburban and residential areas around Kyiv are also rarely struck, yet no one explains this as an elite conspiracy.
After all, Russia controls both the bots and the drones. There is nothing stopping it from deliberately sparing Koncha-Zaspa to make its narrative seem credible. The enemy consistently combines physically devastating attacks with propaganda.
"Koncha-Zaspa never has blackouts!"
This claim began circulating in comments in autumn 2022, following the first waves of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that caused widespread blackouts. Roughly one in five comments on this topic was posted by a bot. Non-bot users, by contrast, would usually ask ironically once whether power outage schedules applied in Koncha-Zaspa, then move on without returning to the topic.
Bots, meanwhile, moved rapidly between videos, posting comments across multiple discussions.
Some of their lengthy comments contained the full set of Russian propaganda talking points: claims that the Ukrainian authorities were selling electricity for profit during attacks, forcing Ukrainians to die in the war, and the familiar refrain that "Ukrainians are slaves".
Some accounts not flagged as bots also behaved suspiciously, posting identical comments several times within a few minutes.
The claim that Koncha-Zaspa never experiences blackouts resurfaces after every major Russian attack on Ukraine’s energy system. It is spread mainly by accounts not flagged as bots, amid the familiar blackout-related frustration of "Why does my neighbor have electricity while I don’t?" Bots do not invent this sentiment. They pick up on existing hostility towards the authorities and residents of Kyiv’s affluent suburbs and amplify it further.
«Перенесіть склади в Кончу-Заспу»
There are just over 400 comments calling for military facilities to be relocated to Koncha-Zaspa (about a third of them posted by bots). Most relate to two incidents: ammunition explosions in the town of Vyshneve and near the village of Myla in Kyiv Region this summer.
The most prolific bot in our sample on this topic, @ВалентинаМокина-ь4н posted a total of 162 comments under different videos on nine news channels, mostly in discussions of attacks on Kyiv and other cities.
Over three years, this bot regularly mentioned Koncha-Zaspa in a variety of contexts. In addition to calling for military facilities to be relocated there, it repeatedly claimed that the area was never shelled, that officials were shielded from the realities of war, and that Koncha-Zaspa was a hub of corruption. It also called for a military memorial to be built there, for refugees to be resettled there, and claimed that the power never went out in the area.
When debris from a Russian missile fell on a hotel in Cherkasy, the bot commented on "ammunition depots and barracks within the city limits". After a strike on a cafe in the village of Hroza in Kharkiv region, where 59 people were killed during a memorial gathering, it claimed that Koncha-Zaspa had "no ammunition depots or barracks, which is why it isn’t being shelled". Then came an apartment building in Sumy, a psychiatric hospital and a printing house in Kharkiv, a railway station in Kherson, and the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv.
The cities and buildings changed, but the bot kept repeating the same claim everywhere, shifting responsibility for the killing of civilians onto the Ukrainian authorities, represented by the catch-all image of Koncha-Zaspa.
The same comment was repeated 26 times.
"Koncha-Zaspa is never shelled"
In our sample, 44% of comments claiming that Koncha-Zaspa is never shelled were posted under news about mass attacks on Ukrainian cities, mostly Kyiv. Such comments appeared on 86 of the 90 channels we studied.
Commenters sometimes repeatedly ask the rhetorical question, "Why not Koncha-Zaspa?", hinting at a secret deal between the Ukrainian and Russian authorities to keep the area off-limits. Others call for strikes on Koncha-Zaspa, claiming that its residents supposedly "don’t feel the war".
Commenters also often offer a ready-made explanation for why the area is not targeted, claiming that Koncha-Zaspa has its own dedicated air defense system and that there is a secret order not to shoot down drones and missiles there.
Bots posted 28% of the comments claiming that Koncha-Zaspa is supposedly never shelled.
The bot that exploited this narrative most actively was @ЗефіркаКозак. For years, it deliberately commented on news about Russian strikes, pushing conspiracy theories about a Ukrainian-Russian government plot to destroy Ukraine’s population. It switched between the channels of different news outlets in a matter of seconds.
How quickly did the bot @ЗефіркаКозак spread the same comment
[chart]
Time between comments
One of the most active bots, @Pomsta.-ide, specializes in lengthy comments, 70% of which were repeated several times over the course of three years. The speed at which it switches between channels suggests it uses pre-written templates. For example, in July 2023, the bot posted the same lengthy comment under six different videos within a single minute.
The bot’s purpose is to explain reality through the lens of Russian propaganda. It writes about everything at once, weaving nearly every narrative into a single lengthy post to construct a distorted version of reality. It then spreads this text in the comments under popular videos on a range of topics.
In 2022, the bot focused on social inequality: ordinary people were left without electricity while the authorities lived in luxury. In 2023, it crammed everything into a single comment: mobilization, corruption, military personnel’s rights, the national telethon, officials’ children living abroad, and Koncha-Zaspa. By 2024, conspiracy theories became more prominent, including claims that air defenses were protecting the estates of the elite.
By 2025, this had expanded into a broader narrative of a "staged war", references to "globalists", and an alleged conspiracy by the elites against Ukrainians.
Sometimes, bots operate like relay teams. For example, @Milena-wp1fq spent several minutes posting the same lengthy text under different videos. Seven minutes later, @Pomsta.-ide picked it up and continued spreading it.
Suspicious "non-bots"
Profiles that show no signs of bot-like behavior are not necessarily ordinary, independent users. They may belong to people who genuinely hold these views, or they may be trolls — controlled accounts that deliberately post aggressive and destructive comments.
The overlap between bots and non-bots is particularly clear in a reworking of Taras Shevchenko’s poem If You But Knew («Якби ви знали, паничі»).
The poem circulated 35 times in different variations, accusing the Ukrainian authorities of corruption, prolonging the war, and causing the loss of lives and territory. Only six of the 15 accounts that shared it were bots, but they were responsible for most of the reposts.
Yet some non-bots occasionally behaved very much like bots.
For example, user @Лариса_маг posted the same text four times under four different videos across three channels in less than three hours.
Another example is the comment “Why not build these ammunition depots in Koncha-Zaspa?” posted under a video on Suspilne’s channel, which received around 800 likes. Its author, @Гуцулзполонини-ь1, was also not classified as a bot.
In comments under reports of Russian attacks and civilian deaths, the account @Гуцулзполонини-ь1у presents itself as an outraged Ukrainian, supposedly so furious with its own government that he urges Russians to target Koncha-Zaspa.
"Drops of hatred"
Bots do not need to convince everyone. After each new strike, it is enough to redirect at least some of the anger, despair, and hatred inward, towards Ukraine itself. With every new wave of comments scattered across YouTube, this cup of hatred gradually fills. The aim is to make Ukrainians see their own authorities, rather than Russia’s, as primarily responsible for the war, deaths, destruction and suffering.
The bots posting about corruption, inequality and other problems in Ukraine do not actually care about these issues. They offer no solutions and have no intention of engaging in any serious discussion. They are simply doing their automated job, bringing those who operate them closer to their goal — destroying Ukraine. Judging by what the bots talk about and the narratives they promote, their operators are Russian intelligence services, carrying out their own "special military operation" on Ukrainian social media.
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