What do Tucker Carlson and Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, have in common?
According to social media posts, both were targeted for being on a “casualty list” subsidized by the Ukrainian government.
After Carlson, the former Fox News host, traveled to Moscow to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, a Feb. 7 Instagram video claimed that “Ukraine is Tucker Carlson on a ‘blacklist’ after an interview with Vladimir Putin. “
One person in the video claimed that after Carlson mocked the interview in a Feb. 6 X video, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy added Carlson to Ukraine’s kill list, “essentially striking a blow to his life. “
He referred to a Ukrainian online page called Myrotvorets, which he said goes through Kyiv and is subsidized by Washington. He shared a screenshot of the name of a May 2023 article on The MintPress’ online page.
Myrotvorets, which translates to “peacemaker” in English, describes itself at best as “a non-governmental think tank on the elements of Ukraine’s crimes against national security, peace, humanity, and foreign law. “
The online page claims to provide law enforcement and special data on “pro-Russian terrorists, separatists, mercenaries, war criminals and murderers. “
The Myrotvorets Center, founded in 2014, and its online page lists private information of other people it considers enemies of Ukraine. It lists Russian military personnel, but also celebrities such as Carlson and rock musician Waters, described as an “anti-Ukrainian propagandist” when he was added to the list in 2018.
Carlson was added to the list in 2023, as shown in the entry, so he did not include him on the online page after his interview with Putin in February.
Nothing on Carlson’s front at the Myrotvorets Center demands that Carlson be wounded or killed, even though other parts of the online page use inflammatory language, such as “Russians and other enemies will have to be killed” and “invaders on Ukrainian soil will be destroyed like madmen. ” Won!”Some of the dead people on the list, adding former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who died of herbal causes in June at the age of 86, have the word “liquidated” glued to them. your photos.
Among the accusations against Carlson, based on a Google translation, are that he is “an assistant to Russian invaders and terrorists,” “an anti-Ukrainian propagandist,” and “has publicly shown himself for Russian aggression and the murder of Ukrainian citizens. “”»
On the back of the entrances for Carlson and others, a line instructs authorities to treat the access as a “statement that this citizen committed a planned act for the national security of Ukraine. “
The target was other hounds. Among them is Andrew Kramer, the New York Times bureau chief in Kyiv, one of thousands of journalists added to the list in 2016 for applying for a press pass to paint in spaces controlled by the Russian-backed rebel Donetsk People’s Republic.
In a 2016 article in the Times, Kramer described Myrotvorets as a “Ukrainian nationalist website” with “close ties to the Ukrainian government. “(He didn’t make those connections. )
Then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko condemned the leak of information from journalists, but the country’s interior minister and officials welcomed the leak, according to the Associated Press.
There is no evidence that the online page has authorization from the U. S. government. The U. S. is not in the U. S. , as the Instagram post states, despite the fact that the online page lists “Langley, VA, USA. “U. S. ” as a location.
We reached out to the State Department, but didn’t get a response. A 2022 report on human rights practices in Ukraine says the website’s disclosure of journalists’ personal data led to harassment. He said the site “has close ties with the country’s security services. “”, but did not specify what those links are.
It’s unclear who recently introduced or runs the site. But George Tuka, a former Ukrainian politician whom The Times of London called a “founding figure” of Myrotvorets, told the news site in 2022 that Myrotvorets did not fund through Ukraine or control through its state. intelligence services.
Two experts on Ukraine told PolitiFact that there is no evidence that the online site is connected to the Ukrainian government.
Taras Fedirko, a political and economic anthropologist at the University of Glasgow, called the site a “right-wing propaganda outlet” and described it as an exposition gimmick. He said there is “no evidence that Myrotvorets is connected in any way” to Ukraine’s existing government.
Fedirko said that when the page was introduced online in 2014, it was rumored to be linked to Anton Gerashchenko, then a member of the Ukrainian parliament. Gerashchenko then served as deputy to former Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who served under Zelensky until 2021.
Fedirko described Gerashchenko as “now a fringe in Ukraine’s volatile political life. “
Eugene Bondarenko, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies trendy Ukrainian culture, said Myrotvorets is “in an awkward situation with the Ukrainian government. “written in Russian, not Ukrainian, and “lists other people, officials, and public figures hostile to Ukraine, as seen by the other people who run this site. “
Regardless of the site’s intentions, some of those on the list were killed, according to media reports.
Stanislav Rzhitsky, a Russian captain who allegedly killed 20 Ukrainian civilians in a missile strike, was shot dead in July 2023 in southern Russia. His handling and personal information were published in Myrotvorets in 2022, the Associated Press reported.
Kramer, a journalist for the New York Times, said a pro-Russian commentator in Kiev was killed near his home in 2015, days after his home was indexed in Myrotvorets.
Bondarenko said that although the threat of harm increases every time a user is tricked, Ukrainian security wouldn’t want a site like this if they wanted to remove someone. “They were just going to get him. “
An Instagram post claimed that Ukraine had added Carlson to an online blacklist because of his meeting with Putin. Carlson was listed as an “anti-Ukraine propagandist” on a site called Myrotvorets, but nothing in his access called for him to be killed or wounded. . He was added to the site in 2023, not after his interview with Putin.
It’s unclear who runs the online page and there appear to have been further ties to some Ukrainian leaders. But experts we spoke to said the site is not connected to the existing Ukrainian government. We evaluate this claim as false.
This fact-check was originally published through PolitiFact, a component of the Poynter Institute. Check out the resources for this fact-check here.