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 new Ukraine-focused website called the bostontimes.org claims President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has started a “forced fertilization” program comparable to the Lebensborn, a Nazi effort 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.
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 highlighted that chicagocrier.com and sanfranchron.com published some of the same content.
Threat researcher Kyle Ehmke stated in April 2024 that the domain vidist.com appeared connected to John Mark Dougan. Ehmke, who identified dcweekly.org as connected to Dougan back in 2022, also listed xposedem.com, londoncrier.co.uk, londoncrier.com as connected to Dougan in 2024. Passive DNS replication connected a Moscow-based IP address, 95.165.0.74, to dcweekly.org, badvolf.com, and ukrainepeace.org among others.
The website leaveukrainewar.com resolves to another IP address, 69.164.216.69, which Ehmke also associates with Dougan. The website has a section called, “About John Dougan,” as well as Kremlin claims about biolabs.
On a separate note, the Boston Times website shared an IP address with other news-like websites in January 2016. Although these websites were purchased at or around the same time, shared a nameserver, registrar, and WHOIS registration in the March 2016 data, there is nothing concrete suggesting these are connected to the Boston Times today. Many of these domains are malfunctioning or are for sale.
300 Pounds of Cocaine
InfoEpi Lab found an earlier Boston Times story claiming President Zelenskyy smuggled “300 lbs of cocaine.” The article was shared heavily by Russian-language channels a week earlier. The story author has appeared on RT within the last year. Another source cited in a Telegram post as supporting the author’s claims has a history with RT.
- The timing of these forwards through the Russian-language channels on March 26, 2024 may suggest coordination: radiostydoba (9:14), smershblizkochat (9:26), golosmordora (10:07), iikhu (10:12), russia_true2 (10:34), svinkavobmoroke_chat (10:54), losevatalks (11:00), kochka_lv (11:04), martcorp (11:05), skuratoff_2_0 (11:08), sanya_florida (11:56), sewerfsefsd (11:59), lsrhelp (11:59), chernmorskiiexpres (12:52), infostreams (13:08), voenndelo (13:25), botcharov (15:27), mir_novosti_obovsem (15:36), denazi_ua (16:d20), expensive_hurma_chat (16:50), petrov_and_boshirov (18:57), sheyhtamir1974 (19:37), znakizelenatara (21:35).
General Observations About the Boston Times
Multiple articles from bostontimes.org have media with Cyrillic names, which is unusual for a U.S.-based outlet operated by English-language speakers. The Italian fact-checking website Open also found the Cyrillic filenames and took it further, tracking the potential origin of these files to prominent Russian state media outlets.
The sitemap for the website is puzzling, lacking categories one would expect on a legitimate news site. Then, it has two separate pages for “real journalism,” real-journalism and real-journalism-2.
The sitemap shows 808 posts since March 17, 2024. Using the keywords ‘Ukraine,’ ‘Kyiv,’ ‘Kiev,’ ‘Donbas,’ ‘Crimea,’ ‘Ukrainian,’ and ‘Zelensky,’ we checked the URLs for stories about Ukraine. 383 URLs from the sitemap contained one of these words, representing approximately 47% of all content on the site.
Many of these stories match a style of information laundering described by researchers at Clemson and covered by the BBC and New York Times.
Timelines
::: {.callout-note collapse=“true”} #### Media Timeline for “Forced Fertilization”
RuFBI - March 30, 2024
bostontimes.org- March 30, 2024
theinteldrop.org - March 30, 2024
theblogginghounds.com- March 31, 2024
Blonde Mary Magdalene - March 31, 2024
Sa Defenza- April 1, 2024
disclosurenews.it - April 2, 2024 :::
To see data included in the timeline, please visit this reference: Telegram Messages Matching “bostontimes.org” OR “boston times.”
On Telegram, an Islander News post featuring the Boston Times “forced fertilization” article was shared by Russian state media channel sputnik_africa, Slavyangrad, infodefengland, and ukr_leaks_eng. The first two channels that forwarded the post frequently promote the Kremlin’s preferred interpretation of events, emphasizing disorder and “Western” decline. Within the hour, channels such as Sputnik Africa forwarded the link from Island News. According to the Atlantic Council, Slavyangrad has spread counter-factual accounts in the aftermath of Russian attacks
The “UKR Leaks” Telegram network is “managed by Vasily Prozorov, a former employee of the Security Service of Ukraine,” according to the DFR Lab. DFR Lab described the network’s content as pro-Kremlin and reported channels in at least nine languages.
Telegram message forwarding began with risegs (15:02, March 30), ukraine_watch (15:13, March 30), redpilldealer4833 (15:41, March 30), slavyangrad (15:53, March 30), sputnik_africa (15:54, March 30), wartimedia (17:11, March 30), inmagnaexcitatio (17:28, March 30), Russian Diplomat 🅉 (17:37, March 30), two_majors (19:43, March 30), infodefengland (10:03, March 31), two_majors again (8:11, April 1), ukr_leaks_eng (14:49, April 1).
Telegram Posts
The language reflects the message containing the Boston Times link but does not indicate the channel’s regular or more common language. Some channels may be listed as having posts in multiple languages.
March 31, 2024
14:51 - theislandernews - English
15:02 - risegs - English
15:13 - ukraine_watch - English
15:41 - redpilldealer4833 - English
15:44 - operac_enjambre - Polish
15:46 - unvaccinatedhealth - Polish
15:53 - slavyangrad - English
15:54 - sputnik_africa - English
16:17 - currentendtimesevents - English
16:19 - operac_enjambre - Spanish
17:11 - wartimedia - English
17:27 - icons2021
17:28 - inmagnaexcitatio - English
17:37 - r_diplomat - English
17:40 - intelrepublic - English
17:51 - operac_enjambre - English
18:43 - oroszokazigazsagoldalan - Hungarian
18:43 - IL RUSSO - English
19:43 - two_majors - English
20:32 - infokju - Polish
23:12 - aussiecossacklive - English
April 1, 2024
3:07 - bluelionmusings - English
3:09 - txdpr - English
6:59 - matrixhungary - Hungarian
8:18 - e2guncensoredlivechat
10:03 - infodefengland - English
8:11 - two_majors - English
10:01 - lauraabolichannel - English
10:10 - businessoftruth - English
12:55 - justjuanosavin - English
13:03 - not_on_the_beeb - English
14:49 - ukr_leaks_eng - English
20:24 - ashbrierleygroupchattheden - English
21:42 - bringingpurefacts - English
April 2, 2024
9:20 - q_totalrecall
9:20 - londonofficialworldwiderally
14:01 - leurplan - French
17:50 - hocineledz - French
The language reflects the message containing the Boston Times link but does not indicate the channel’s regular or more common language. Some channels may be listed as having posts in multiple languages.
March 26, 2024
9:14 - radiostydoba - Russian
9:18 - kopylovakatya - French
9:26 - smershblizkochat - Russian
10:07 - golosmordora - Russian
10:12 - iikhu - Russian
10:34 - russia_true2 - Russian
10:54 - svinkavobmoroke_chat - Russian
11:00 - losevatalks - Russian
11:04 - kochka_lv - Russian
11:05 - martcorp - Russian
11:08 - skuratoff_2_0 - Russian
11:56 - sanya_florida - Russian
11:59 - sewerfsefsd - Russian
11:59 - lsrhelp - Russian
12:52 - chernmorskiiexpres - Russian
13:08 - infostreams - Russian
13:25 - voenndelo - Russian
15:27 - botcharov - Russian
15:36 - mir_novosti_obovsem - Russian
16:20 - denazi_ua - Russian
16:50 - expensive_hurma_chat - Russian
18:57 - petrov_and_boshirov - Russian
19:37 - sheyhtamir1974 - Russian
20:38 - transformerchat - English
21:35 - znakizelenatara - Russian
March 27, 2024
0:49 - rbshitposting - Russian
2:14 - vesna_2o22 - Russian
4:20 - zanoza - Russian
5:17 - extraspectrapro - Russian
7:49 - giuseppemasala - Italian
8:00 - life_underzoccupati - Russian
8:10 - hleba_zrelisch - Russian
8:36 - glavsu - Russian
8:46 - sskarnaukhov - Russian
10:20 - ilovebelarus100 - Russian
12:04 - barantchik - Russian
12:43 - gagauznewsmd - Russian
20:54 - slovensko_slovakom - Slovak
20:56 - ceskadomobrana - Slovak
March 28, 2024
5:50 - aifonline - Russian
9:16 - lacrunadellag
16:13 - giuseppemasala - Italian
17:45 - mylordbebo - English
18:24 - uinhurricane - English
22:00 - skoloth - Russian
22:15 - aussiecossacklive - English
March 29, 2024
- 11:54 - freedomwarriorsuk - English
March 30, 2024
5:47 - sbbytoday - Russian
11:02 - sbbytoday - Russian
Citation
@article{li2024,
author = {Li, E. Rosalie},
publisher = {Information Epidemiology Lab},
title = {Mock {News} {Sites} {Continue} to {Spread} {Disinformation}
{About} {Ukraine}},
journal = {InfoEpi Lab},
date = {2024-04-06},
url = {https://infoepi.org/posts/2024/04/06-mock-websites-spreading-disinformation-ukraine.html},
langid = {en}
}