Craziest Ukraine war conspiracy theories from living corpses to Zelenskyy ‘body double’

Despite a year’s worth of news reports from both sides in the conflict, some people have come to believe that the war between Russia and Ukraine has been faked from the start.

These conspiracy theorists – like their fellow-travellers who like to believe the Earth is flat or that Neil Armstrong never walked on the Moon – have come up with a vast pile of alleged “evidence” that the war is a fiction.

The war-deniers, most of them right-wingers based in the US, are filling social media with their wild claims about Putin’s invasion – which they claim has been faked by US President Joe Biden for financial reasons.

READ MORE: Improbable conspiracy theories that turned out to be true

One verified Twitter user who has collected over 1.5 million followers through right-wing talking points such as Covid denialism has shared dozens of posts questioning US financial support for Ukraine.

In one typical post, they write: “With every war going all the way back to Vietnam, the press has been heavily integrated with the troops and there’s thousands of hours of live video footage.

“In Ukraine, nothing. We get no footage, no detailed updates, no graphs explaining how the war is going, who has control of what land, etc.”

Referring to a clip of US President Joe Biden visiting Kyiv, where his security detail appear unruffled by an air raid warning, he adds: “All we get is Biden fake air raid sirens and one famous actor or politician a day happily prancing around Kiev with Zelenskyy with no helmets or body protection offering him 100s of billion of dollars.”

They claim that anyone who questions the reality of the way is condemned as a “Putin Puppet”.

The post was shared over 20,000 times and reposted on Donald Trump’s Truth Social network by former US National Security Advisor Michael T Flynn.

While the Twitter user ignored numerous comments pointing out there was ample evidence that the war was absolutely real, they did find time to post a link to a site selling woolly hats with their account logo on.

Another piece of “evidence” offered by the conspiracy theorists is the tower block near Kyiv’s Zhuliany airport that was struck by a Russian missile in the early days of the war.

More recent photos show the building has been almost completely repaired – in the conspiracy theorists’ eyes evidence that it was never damaged in the first place.

But in fact, as shown in reports on Ukrainian news site The Village, the building work to repair the damage took several months. Because Russian troops have been pushed back towards the east of Ukraine, missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital are much less frequent and many citizens are working almost as normal.

Another particularly comical claim from the conspiracy theorists is the story of the “moving corpse”.

A viral video circulating online shows a TV journalist reporting “from Ukraine” in front of what appears to be a pile of bodies.

A close look at the background reveals that one of the “corpses” is moving.

But the “dead body” wasn’t a zombie, or a “crisis actor” making fake news. The footage actually shows a protest against climate change in Austria last February – with activists using as corpses to make a point.

That hasn’t stopped Ukraine war deniers – and, interestingly, Covid deniers – from re-using it and claiming it proved the war is a lie.

One final remarkable claim from the conspiracy theorists is the body double that isn’t a body double.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has kept himself very visible throughout the war, in a bid to bolster the morale of ordinary Ukrainians.

But he’s under constant threat. Putin sent a special forces “snatch squad” to Kyiv in the first hours of the war with the order to kill or capture the Ukrainian leader.

So understandably he’s surrounded 24/7 by armed bodyguards. The main one is Maksym Donets, who has been regularly photographed with the president since he was first appointed as head of the president’s bodyguard team in 2019.

Despite that, there are numerous claims on social media that his presence in the background of some TV news clips is proof that there are two Zelenskyys.

One typical post reads: “Zelensky’s latest blooper makes its slip on live television broadcast, where possible BODY DOUBLE fails in his ONE JOB of laying low, putting to question the reality of his heroic visits to Bakhmut and Kherson warzones”.

It’s notable the “globalist manipulators” behind the alleged conspiracy have never deleted any of the so-called evidence and images of Mr Donets – and even a TikTok fan account devoted to the muscular bodyguard – are still readily available online.

Quite why the conspiracy theorists insist on peddling their flawed evidence isn’t clear.

But perhaps the fact that one of them is selling a machine-knitted beanie hat with their logo on for $30.00 (about £25) provide some clue.

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