After the air strike on a school in Chernihiv, a video of a bloodied surviving girl was spread on Ukrainian social networks. But her story was soon picked up by pro-Kremlin accounts, which falsely accused her of falsification.

“There was no whistling, no rustling, no sound of shelling,” says Tanya. “She just hit the building, and suddenly everything went dark. The building fell.”

In early March, Tanya came under air strike. She was helping to sort clothes for humanitarian aid at a school in Chernihiv when a rocket hit the building.

Although authorities did not name the school number, the BBC was able to confirm the specific building using images published in the telegram.

Local authorities said that the Russians aimed at two schools that day, killing nine people and injuring four.

Tanya fainted as a result of the explosion. She says that when she regained consciousness, she realized that she was alive and could walk. She got up, looked around and saw people in panic. She also noticed bodies lying on the floor, including the body of a woman standing next to her minutes before the impact.

Frightened, she fled to her home.

There, she posted a video on Instagram – still in blood and with visible injuries on her face – in which she explained what had happened.

“I was at school on the 21st when the explosion happened,” she said in the video. “I survived. Good luck to everyone. I hope you are luckier than me.”

“Why am I writing this story? There were just a lot of kids at that school. I don’t know if they survived. Just send this video to all your Russian friends.”

In a few hours, her video was sold to Ukraine. It gained tens of thousands of views on Instagram alone, and was picked up by a number of Ukrainian news sites.

Tanya told the BBC that she had received thousands of new followers and dozens of messages on Instagram – some with support, some with threats.

Among those who wrote to her were people from Russia. Some of them apologized for the actions of the Russian authorities. But others did not believe her story and called it “fake.”

Soon, Tanya’s friends started sending her screenshots from Russian and Belarusian media, in which her video was called a fake.

There she was called a “student”, claiming that the wound on her face was fake, and said that the blood on her face did not look natural and that she behaved too “normally” for the person who had just survived the explosion.

All these allegations were untrue. Tanya is not a “student” – she is 29 years old, before the war she worked as a waitress.

The pictures she took on the second day after the attack – and which she shared with the BBC – clearly show facial injuries, which correspond to the shots she posted on Instagram.

As for her seemingly calmness, Tanya told the BBC that she was “deeply shocked” when she recorded the video.

“I was calm and not scared. Just shocked,” she says. “A few hours later I was hysterical. For the next two days I couldn’t eat or sleep, I just cried. It was a nightmare.”

The Russian media also claimed that schools across Ukraine had closed at the beginning of the war, so there could not be many children at the time of the strike.

But the school was used as a collection point for humanitarian aid, so locals considered it a safe place, Tanya said. Some of them brought their children there.

This information was confirmed by officials. The head of the Chernihiv regional state administration, Vyacheslav Chaus, said that the basement of the school was open so that local civilians could hide in case of shelling.

Tanya is one of a number of civilian Ukrainians who have been falsely accused by the Russian media – and even the Russian government – of staging the attacks.

Among the key sources spreading false allegations about Tanya was an account called War on Fakes, whose “debunking” of her video has so far been viewed more than 400,000 times in a telegram.

Supported by the Russian Foreign Ministry and its embassies on social media, the multilingual fact-finding project claims to provide “unbiased information about what is happening in Ukraine.”

Although some fact-checks are genuine, the account also contains false information, such as the allegations against Tanya. In general, its content echoes Moscow’s rhetoric about the war: it claims that Ukraine is an aggressor, that Ukrainians are committing mass war crimes, and that any evidence of Russia’s illegal actions is fabricated.

Pro-Kremlin communities on the Russian social network VKontakte, a number of regional Russian media outlets, at least one news agency and Belarusian state television published articles that referred to War on Fakes.

Tanya says that when she saw false statements about herself on the Internet, she felt sadness, not anger.

I was sad and sorry for these people who believe in all this lies. They are so afraid to admit that this war is real and it’s happening, so it’s easier for them to find excuses or reasons not to believe it or call my story a fake. It’s easier for them to believe. that Ukraine is a theater and Ukrainians are actors. ”

She left Ukraine for Poland. Now she has a scar on her face. Also because of the explosion, her eyesight deteriorated and she developed post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I keep remembering the attack, even when I’m in Poland now,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t think I’m ready to go home.”

Want to get top news in Messenger? Subscribe to our Telegram or Viber !