DISINFO: Financial Times reported that Ukraine threatens Russia with terrorist attacks on its territory
SUMMARY
The head of the main intelligence directorate of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence, Kiril Budanov, threatened Russia with terrorist attacks and sabotages in its territory, the British newspaper Financial Times reported. In an interview with the outlet, Budanov affirmed that guerrilla activity in the territories controlled by Russia is intensifying, and named the attacks with car bomb in the region of Kherson, one of which caused the death of an official of the military-civil administration.
RESPONSE
The claim, first made by the Spanish service of Sputnik and reproduced by Argentinian outlet DataUrgente, is a disingenuous distortion of the original article published by the Financial Times, in order to support several pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives justifying Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine.
The British publication doesn’t use the words “threaten” or “terrorist”, nor refers to the Ukrainian region of Kherson as “Russian territory”. Instead, the newspaper uses terms such as “partisan activities in Russian-occupied territories”, and reports that Ukrainian intelligence chief Kiril Budanov actually said that “attacks and sabotage operations ‘are held everywhere, and they were and will be held in Russia and many other places’”.
Distorting articles in Western media to make them appear as supporting pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives is a frequent technique of pro-Kremlin outlets. See other examples in our database, such as false claims that The New York Times reports that Russia is barely affected by sanctions, that Germany doesn’t trust Zelenskyy according to Der Spiegel, that The National Interest explained why the US should side with Russia in Ukraine; or that Foreign Policy explained why Washington needs a “Russian intervention”.