A large-scale campaign to discredit Ukraine is unfolding again in the information space. This time, the focus is on the issue of weapons and drone control. Russian propaganda resources are actively spreading false information that Ukrainian military personnel are allegedly selling weapons and attack drones to the Italian mafia.
This narrative is built on a gross distortion of facts and manipulation of the words of high-ranking Italian officials. The "Center for Countering Disinformation" (CCD), together with RBC-Ukraine, conducted an investigation and refuted these claims.
Manipulation with figures: where did the 780 thousand units come from?
One of the main arguments in the fake article was the claim that more than 780 thousand units of weapons transferred to Ukraine by Western partners were stolen and ended up on the black market. Propagandists try to convince the audience that the Ukrainian army cannot cope with controlling the supplies.
However, reality looks different. The figure of 780,465 does appear in official documents, but it has nothing to do with military aid from NATO or other countries. These are data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, reflecting the amount of lost and stolen civilian and personal weapons on the territory of the country since the beginning of the full-scale invasion by Russia.
Thus, Russian sources intentionally substitute concepts, presenting statistics on the civilian sector as losses of Western weapons, in order to create a false impression of chaos in the Ukrainian army.
Italian prosecutor against the mafia: what De Lucia actually said
The second key element of the fake is the statement by the chief prosecutor of Palermo, Maurizio De Lucia. Russian media quote him as allegedly confirming that Ukrainian military personnel are supplying drones to mafia groups.
Facts say the opposite. Prosecutor De Lucia never claimed there were direct deals between Ukraine and the mafia. In Italian media materials, the issue was different: Italian law enforcement agencies are concerned about the risks of the development of the black market for weapons in Europe as a whole due to the war.
According to De Lucia, criminal structures are showing interest in the latest military technologies and are looking for opportunities to acquire drones. This is a general concern about the leakage of technology into the criminal world, not an accusation against a specific state or army.
Control system and the goal of disinformation
The Center for Countering Disinformation emphasizes that Ukraine has a strict multi-level system for accounting and control over the use of weapons. The process is monitored not only by Ukrainian authorities but also by the supplier states themselves, which participate directly in monitoring.
Since the beginning of the full-scale war, there has been no evidence of Ukraine selling Western weapons on the black market. The goal of this information campaign is obvious: to undermine the trust of international partners in Ukraine and discredit the Ukrainian defense sector.
This is just one of many examples of how the enemy tries to compromise Ukraine in the eyes of the world. From fictional US biolabs to non-existent victories on the front lines — the arsenal of fakes is huge, but the mechanisms for exposing them work effectively.
