“Son of maniac Chikatilo died at the front near Kharkiv”: TCC denies Russian fake
24 August 04:21
The Kharkiv military commissariat has denied reports that the son of Soviet serial killer Andriy Chikatilo, who allegedly served in the Ukrainian army, died at the front.
In response to a request from Suspilne Kharkiv, the head of the Sloboda district TCC and JV, Dmytro Slyota, said that Andriy Chikatilo’s son did not join the Ukrainian army, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
The TCC also told Suspilne that the man had violated the rules of military registration.
“Alive, did not serve”: Andriy Chykatilo’s son tells what he thinks about fakes about his death at the front
Suspilne managed to contact Yuriy. He confirmed that he did not serve in the Ukrainian army. He claims that he did not evade service, he updated his data through the ASC. He does not plan to mobilize, as he has chronic illnesses. According to him, he is indifferent to the reports of his death in the Russian media and is not willing to discuss this topic.
Who reported that the “son of the maniac Chikatilo” died at the front
The Russian propaganda Telegram channel SHOT was the first to report the death of the “son of the maniac Chikatilo”; the publication appeared there on August 20.
The next day, at least 30 Russian news sites quoted the text. With reference to the Russian media, similar messages began to appear in Ukrainian publics, including the Telegram channel “Trukha Kharkiv”, which has more than 500 thousand subscribers.
These messages were also disseminated in Ukrainian media without any reference to official sources or attempts to obtain official comments.
The publications claimed that “the Russian Armed Forces liquidated Yuriy Chikatilo”. It was also stated that the man had been fighting in the Ukrainian Armed Forces since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, served in the artillery and was killed during a “massive shelling by the Russian army” 20 km from Kharkiv.
The reports also stated that the deceased was to be awarded the “Order for Courage, II degree”. The publications did not indicate Yuriy’s real surname, but called him Chykatilo Jr. and repeatedly repeated the narrative of the “son of a bloody maniac.”
Why the death of the “son of the maniac Chykatilo” is a Russian fake: “Some people choose hype”
Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, told Suspilne Kharkiv that Russian propaganda continues its campaign to discredit the Ukrainian military.
“On the one hand, it is discrediting the Defense Forces, which are now open to anyone. It is purely to play on emotions because of a big name and discredit the Defense Forces inside Ukraine. On the other hand, it is to play on the fact that everyone is guaranteed to die. That is, to use well-known names to throw in a fake about their deaths. It still takes a lot of time to refute, it is difficult to refute it hour by hour. And the fake is rooted in people’s subconscious and stays there regardless of refutation, unfortunately,” says Andriy Kovalenko.
The negative connotation remains regardless of the fact that it is a son. It can even be a grandson. But psychology works in the way that you learned a historical fact at school. You memorized it in a negative way. And everything that is associated with this fact, in this case, the surname, has a negative connotation in the subconscious. And through this negative connotation, the negative is relayed to the Defense Forces. It’s a purely psychological technique, very primitive and simple. They want to portray the Defense Forces as an army of criminals. A massive, primitive propaganda tool.
“We are conducting outreach work, we are regularly approached by certain administrators of large Ukrainian publics, and we communicate with them. And a number of publics did not post this story for themselves. But it’s almost impossible to control all social media, especially Facebook, where it spread very quickly. Some Telegram channels did the same. We contacted them, but some of them chose hype,” says Andriy Kovalenko.
