The news that "separatists" had shelled a kindergarten in Stanytsia Luhanska, a locality under the control of Ukrainian forces spread like a houise fire through Western social and mass media.
The pictures show a wide "breach" in a massive four-brick-thick wall of the building. The bricks have collapsed inside the building, crushing children's toys. The picture is meant to evoke an emotional reaction.
But I would rather believe that they drove a Ukrainian tank into direct firing range and fired an armour-piercing missile without any explosives, at the kindergarten in order to get a picture of destruction.
The Kyiv regime is used to underpinning its negotiating position with an escalation on the line of contact in the conflict area, just in time for important summits and other international meetings.
Anoter "false flag" promoted by Russian state media.
Pro-Kremlin disinformation combined with a conspiracy theory presented without any factual evidence. According to the RT-German article, a shelling of a kindergarten is supposed to be a false-flag action by the Ukrainian government to strengthen its negotiating position in the current Russian-Ukrainian war. The Ukrainian army is a regular subject of pro-Kremlin disinformation efforts, especially when it comes to the shelling of civilian facilities, with responsibility regularly placed on the Ukrainian armed forces.
According to consistent reports from the Guardian, New York Times fact-checking organisations StopFake, Bellingcat, and the volunteer community Informnapalm that the shelling of the kindergarten was clearly the work of Russian or Russian-backed illegal forces in the Non-government controlled areas of Eastern Ukraine (NGCA). "Russian-backed forces launched an intense artillery barrage across the line of control with Ukrainian forces, shelling a nursery school and injuring three people. According to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) there were "multiple shelling incidents" on Thursday morning across the frontline in the Donbas region. The attack on the city of Stanytsia Luhanska blew a hole through the wall of kindergarten number 21. The Ukrainian military said 32 shells landed on the city, also injuring a serviceman and disrupting electricity supplies. A second missile left a small crater near the children's slides in the garden playground, which was not described in the RT-German-article. The attack was part of an apparent coordinated bombardment by pro-Russian separatists in multiple locations across the 250-kilometre long frontline." There is no factual evidence to support the claim that a Ukrainian tank shot the hole in the wall of the kindergarten, nor were there any traces of a tank in the area, nor is there any circumstantial evidence to support this conspiracy theory.
In the wake of the Russian military build-up on the Ukrainian-Russian border, there is a massive increase in pro-Kremlin disinformation blaming the Ukrainian army for civilian casualties or infrastructure damage in order to discredit it.
Amid the continuous military escalation at Ukraine’s borders, Russian state-controlled media continue to cultivate disinformation narratives about imminent or even ongoing atrocities against the population in Donbas. See more Myths of the Kremlin’s Playbook: Fabricating Pretext to Invade Ukraine here.
See also about more False Flags for recognition: here.
More examples of disinformation on the Ukrainian army can be found in the database.