Mock News Sites Continue to Spread Disinformation About Ukraine

A group founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin is behind a report alleging Ukraine is engaging in “forced fertilization.“ A news site publishing the report shares an IP address with other news-like domains.

The text has been updated to better distinguish which groups are referenced and when. Further context and information regarding the assessments have also been added.

A Ukraine-Focused Boston-Based Website — Nothing to See Here

A new Ukraine-focused website called the bostontimes.org claims President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has started a “forced fertilization” program comparable to the Lebensborn, a Nazi program that sought to produce future soldiers. The evidence for this is misrepresented footage of women who were filmed illegally during healthcare examinations from 2018 to 2019.

Russian Telegram channels have circulated variations of this Lebensborn claim since November 2023, but the catalyst for this specific article is content from the Foundation for Battling Injustice. The group, which uses the acronym FBI (we will use the acronym RuFBI), was established by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin bequeathed everything, including Wagner PMC, to his son Pavel Prigozhin.

Boston Times Among First to Publish “Forced Fertilization” Story

The Boston Times article was among the first sources of the “forced fertilization” story. Like instances reported by the New York Times and the Italian outlet Open, this appears to involve mock news websites that are part of a network with names referencing locations around the United States, such as sanfranchron.com, which published the same drug smuggling story as the Boston Times except by a different author, about ten minutes apart.

Figure 1: Image from report pushing unsubstantiated claims about “forced fertilization.”

David Puente, from the fact-checking organization Open, reported that the bostontimes.org and chicagocrier.com were connected to a Russian IP address, 95.165.66.27. This IP address currently shows a relationship to the domain vidist.com and also, a historical SSL certificate for bbc-uk.news. Puente…