Russian propagandists falsified documents, manipulated and edited photos to 'confirm' Ukraine's meddling in Georgia elections

Parliamentary elections were held in Georgia on October 26. According to the Georgian Central Election Commission, the pro-Russian ruling party "Georgian Dream" won the elections. However, the country's president Salome Zourabichvili and opposition political parties did not recognize these results and declared massive falsifications. Against this background, many Georgian citizens, who do not agree with these results, began to protest.

Russian propaganda immediately "found" a "Ukrainian trace" in these protests to aggravate the situation.

Russian propaganda media began to spread fake materials even before the vote in Georgia. On October 25, the TASS news agency created two related news stories about the alleged training of "extremists" by the Ukrainian special services, supposedly to destabilize the situation in Georgia. Later, they began to be replicated by other Russian media outlets and many Kremlin bots on X.

Initially, TASS published an alleged response of the head of the Mariupol District Police Department in the Donetsk Region, Oleh Yaholnyk, to a query from the SBU's Main Directorate in the Dnipropetrovsk Region. This "document" says that the SBU is supposedly looking for Ukrainian and Georgian citizens who previously lived in Ukraine but after the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion moved to Georgia or plan to do so.

The text of the propagandists' "news story" also states that the national police of the Dnipropetrovsk region, at the request of the Security Service of Ukraine in the same region, is allegedly "looking for" ethnic Georgians living in Ukraine to "organize riots in Georgia." In particular, the issue concerns current and former soldiers of the Azov regiment and military personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. At the same time, there is no information about this in the "letter," which TASS published as "evidence."

However, the Russian news agency did "find" a "former Azov fighter." TASS published another "news story" about this on the same day. Propagandists claimed that Kyiv had allegedly sent a Ukrainian citizen of Georgian origin Zakro Nodarovich Avaliani, born in 1997, who is a native of Mariupol, to Sakartvelo. Fakers claimed that this person was a former fighter of the Azov regiment who was supposed to lead extremists allegedly planning to organize riots in Georgia. A photo of the man is also attached to the material.

These two "news stories" from TASS are fake. Let's analyze the forged document.

First of all, the address indicated by the propagandists in the header of the letter, namely, 15B Volodymyra Velykoho Street in Dnipro, has nothing to do with either the police or the SBU. According to YouControl, 19 legal entities are registered at this address and specified government agencies are not among them.