Almost from the very beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russian disinformers continuously spread fakes about Ukraine selling West-supplied weapons. However, since these stories didn't resonate well with Western audiences, Russia has recently backed up their disinformation spews with the "real evidence base".

Last week, the Russian media focused their attention on the south of Ukraine. The Ukrainian counteroffensive, although slow, with the use of HIMARSes to strike supply lines still creates a new reality, so Russian propagandists need to respond to it somehow. Also, Russia found a new enemy on the international arena - the state of Israel. Read about this and more in the new issue of our monitoring of Russian state media and manipulative websites that purposefully spread Russian disinformation.

Russian disinformers devoted every third piece of news to the war and its consequences for Russia. The central topic of the news is the confrontation with the West, while Russians prefer to write less and less about the economy, sanctions, and hostilities. However, the successes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the south do not allow the propagandists to relax and force them to invent new absurd explanations for the delays of the “special operation”. For example, last week the Russian media stated that the failures in the Kherson region take place due to the fact that the Russian Armed Forces are directly fighting the Americans. We analyzed almost 22,000 news items from Russian state media and manipulative websites that purposefully spread Russian disinformation, and we continue to review what the enemy is telling its own population about the attack on Ukraine.

Since the middle of April, the second most populous regional center in southern Ukraine has been living without a centralized supply of drinking water, while the tap water is only suitable for toilets. The reason for this is a water pipeline that was cut off by the Russians, which stretches for more than 70 km from the Dnipro, and which had been supplying Mykolaiv with drinking water for more than 40 years. As long as the majority of the water line is in the occupied territory, it is impossible to repair it. TEXTY researched whether it was possible to establish an alternative water supply in three months and how the situation may be solved in the long-term perspective. Translated by Dmitry Lytov, Mike Lytov

Russian disinformers continue to devote every third piece of news to the war and its consequences for Russia. And we analyze the news of Russian websites and review what the enemy is telling its own population about the attack on Ukraine. To do this, we analyzed 22,000 news items from Russian state media and manipulative websites that purposefully spread Russian disinformation.

In response to our project "A Wall of Fire. What Projectiles Hit the Ukrainian Positions and How", we received a letter from our reader who serves in the artillery. We publish his reaction below as it contains a lot of interesting facts.

Russia periodically launches missile strikes on objects in Ukraine from the territory of the Caspian Sea. The sources of these strikes are both ships from the Caspian Fleet, which carry Kalibr cruise missiles, and Tu-95 and Tu-160 heavy bombers, which launch Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruise missiles on Ukraine’s territory while "barraging" over the Caspian waters.

Russian disinformers continue to devote every third piece of news to the war and its consequences for Russia. And we analyze the news of Russian websites and review what the enemy is telling its own population about the attack against Ukraine. For this purpose, we analyzed almost 25,000 news items from Russian state media and manipulative websites that purposefully spread Russian propaganda.

In the past 10 days, there has been a significant increase in the number of Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s rear military positions. Ukraine troops are now actively using HIMARS (High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) supplied by Western allies. They are believed to be the modern analogues of the Soviet Uragan and Smerch fire systems.

Reporter Gian Micalessin heads to occupied Melitopol and passes some Russian combat vehicles on the way, all marked with a large letter Z. In the city, he cheerfully poses near billboards erected by the occupiers on the eve of Victory Day, and says that the appearance of the city has changed since the Russians decorated it with symbols of the Soviet Union and images of their heroes.