Welcome to Reality Check, NewsGuard’s newsletter that tracks the false claims and conspiracy theories that shape our world — and who’s behind them. Support us by becoming a premium member or sharing our work.

Follow us: X | LinkedIn | Instagram | Bluesky

Russia Targets Ukraine at the Winter Olympics with Flood of Fabricated News Reports

Russia’s Matryoshka influence campaign seeks to isolate and humiliate Ukrainian athletes with claims ranging from anti-social behavior to cowardly defections.

By Alice Lee

A Russian influence operation has unleashed an avalanche of false claims targeting Ukraine and Ukrainians during the Winter Olympics in Italy, spreading fabricated news reports aimed at disparaging Ukrainian athletes, visitors, and workers as criminals, cheaters, and cowardly defectors.

NewsGuard identified 28 videos and images mimicking genuine news outlets and government agencies that were released between Jan. 30, 2026, and Feb. 10, 2026, advancing claims including that Ukrainian catering staff at the Olympics were spitting in food, that the World Anti-Doping Association has “made doping tests easier” for Ukrainian Olympic athletes, and that rapper Snoop Dogg refused to have his photo taken with the Ukrainian delegation due to the supposed Nazism in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

All of the fake news reports appear to have originated from the Russian government-aligned influence campaign known as Matryoshka, the Russian word for a nesting doll. In line with Matryoshka’s playbook, the videos and images imitate content from established news outlets and other institutions, including Reuters, Euronews, Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, and the Italian Ministry of Health. The false claims spread primarily on popular messaging and social media app Telegram, collectively gaining approximately 2 million views.

UKRAINIANS SEGREGATED?

For example, on Feb. 5, 2026, a video news report purporting to be from Canadian public broadcaster CBC stated that Ukrainian athletes are housed away from other athletes because of their aggressive behavior at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The claim gained 504,000 views on Russian-language Telegram channels, before spreading to four sites in the Pravda network of 280 websites that repost pro-Kremlin content, as well as to multiple major Russian media outlets.

The supposed news report began with the first 15 seconds of a genuine CBC news report on life in the Olympic Village, then overlaid an AI-generated version of the journalist’s voice over stock footage to fabricate a story about the supposedly aggressive athletes from Ukraine. In fact, social media postings from athletes indicate that Ukrainians are housed in one of the main residential blocks, on the same floor as the Spanish Olympic team. Moreover, NewsGuard found no news reports or public statements suggesting that Ukrainians were accused of misbehavior during the 2024 Games, and the International Olympic Committee denied the claim.

DEFECTIONS, DEFECATIONS, AND VANDALIZING THE COLOSSEUM?

Some of the more egregious false claims involve supposed acts of anti-Olympics protest by Ukrainians attending the Games. These include claims that a Ukrainian performance artist smeared his own fecal matter on the walls of an airplane lavatory on a flight to Milan, that a Ukrainian feminist activist group chipped 44 pounds of stone off Rome’s iconic Colosseum, and that Ukrainian refugees were protesting outside Italian embassies throughout Europe, calling for the Olympics to be cancelled. The claims advancing this narrative collectively gained 177,000 views on Telegram.

The reports framed these incidents as attempts by Ukrainians to call attention to their plight, protest the inclusion of Russian athletes at the games, or denounce the Olympics entirely. Russia is banned from the Milan Games due to its invasion of Ukraine, although a small number of Russian athletes have been allowed to compete as independent athletes.

Ten of the 28 claims attempt to portray Ukrainian athletes and visitors as anti-social and even criminal. For example, a video purporting to be from hotel booking site Booking.com warns visitors to the Olympics that Ukrainians created fake versions of the site to defraud visitors looking for accommodations.

Three of the claims focus on supposed Ukrainian defections, implying that athletes are seizing on the Olympics to flee mandatory military service. One claim, accompanied by a falsified report from independent Russian news site Agentstvo, stated that passports of male Ukrainian athletes’ family members were confiscated en masse in Italy to avoid potential defections of entire families. The false claim gained 249,000 views on Telegram.

ATTACKS GAIN TRACTION

In the months preceding the 2026 Olympics, Matryoshka’s falsified reports typically only spread to a handful of pro-Kremlin Russian-language Telegram channels, NewsGuard found. However, as the Olympics approached, such claims started gaining more traction, spreading on a broader range of Telegram channels and on multiple anonymous X accounts.

Indeed, NewsGuard found that Matryoshka’s Olympics-related claims have already spawned 17 articles in eight languages, including Italian, French, and Czech, on the pro-Kremlin Pravda network alone. Claims originating in Matryoshka’s falsified news reports have also been repeated as fact by mainstream Russian media and political commentators, which is rare for Matryoshka influence operations.

This is not the first time that a pro-Kremlin influence campaign has used an international sports event to try to undermine Ukraine. In October 2022, pro-Kremlin sources spread a fabricated news report with the Al-Jazeera logo claiming that drunk Ukrainian fans were arrested at the World Cup in Qatar for displaying Nazi symbols. During the 2024 Summer Olympic in Paris, pro-Kremlin sources falsely claimed that Ukrainian athletes were required to wear GPS ankle bracelets to prevent them from defecting.

The press office of the Milano-Cortina Olympics said in a brief phone interview that it had “no comment” on the falsified reports targeting Ukraine. NewsGuard emailed the Italian National Olympic Committee and the Italian Ministry of Sport and Youth for comment but did not receive any responses.

Edited by Dina Contini and Eric Effron

Learn more about Reality Check’s Premium Membership here.

You find, we report: Let your fellow Reality Check readers know about false claims you run across online. Our analysts debunk false claims before any others 80% of the time, but we can’t catch everything. If you find what looks like a false claim, let us know. We’ll investigate and report back in Reality Check.

Reality Check is produced by co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.

We launched Reality Check to shed light on the false claims spreading online, how they spread, and the forces behind them. Each day, we aim to bring you the story behind your news feed and help you stay informed about the false claims circulating in the news. Support our work by becoming a premium member.

Have feedback? Send us an email: realitycheck@newsguardtech.com.

Share NewsGuard’s Substack