About Russian television channel Lifenews

On June the Russian television channel Lifenews show a piece called “Enrichment in a Kyiv Way,” during which it falsely reported that Ukrainian mobile operators are charging the mobile accounts of residents of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic for the needs of the Antiterrorist Operation (ATO). It also reported on organized SMS campaigns by the operators.

      Representatives of the mobile operator life:) have denied their involvement in the SMS campaign. Moreover, if we look closely at the SMS shown in the Lifenews item, we observe some details proving that the Ukrainian mobile operators had nothing to do with the SMS deliveries to the inhabitants of the occupied territory.

The press office of the company says that “all official text messages are delivered with the official way of writing of our brand, that is with the smiley and lower case letter – life:)”.

       We can see on the phone screen, which was shown in the news program, the text message from the user “Kievstar.” But the mobile operator Kyivstar only uses its brand name “Kyivstar” when sending text messages to customers. Moreover, Kyivstar does not serve customers in the temporarily occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts at all. By the way, there is a mistake in the text of the message – underlined word  was written as “принадлежит”(prinadlegit).