Every so often, a story emerges that is designed not to inform but to ignite. Right now, Russian state media is pushing a dark tale about secret underground cells run by Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, where civilians are allegedly tortured. The Center for Countering Disinformation, a unit within Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, says this is a coordinated and intensifying disinformation campaign. At the heart of the latest wave is a so-called female volunteer from Kramatorsk who claims that during the Anti-Terrorist Operation period in eastern Ukraine, she was locked in an “SBU basement,” tortured, threatened, and told her family would be harmed. The story is emotional, specific, and grim—designed to be shared and believed. But according to the CCD, it is fabricated. The woman’s testimony is being amplified by Russian state-run propaganda outlets, which have a long history of recycling similar accusations. The goal is not to tell the truth but to create a version of reality in which Ukraine is the aggressor and Russia is the rescuer. That narrative has been a cornerstone of Kremlin messaging for nearly a decade, and it is being revived now with fresh energy. The woman’s identity, her history, and even her existence are unverified, yet the story is being repeated across channels as if it were established fact. The emotional pull is intentional, because a person who feels outrage is less likely to ask questions. The CCD’s warning is a reminder that not every tear-soaked testimony is true, and that in the age of information warfare, compassion can be manipulated. It is easy to watch a video of someone in pain and feel the urge to do something, to share it, to take sides. That is exactly what the propagandists are counting on. They want the story to move faster than the facts, because a lie that travels around the world in seconds can do its damage long before the truth has even put its shoes on.
Why would Russian propaganda invent a story so dark? Because dark stories travel. The tale of the Kramatorsk “volunteer” is not new in its structure; it is the latest version of a script that has been used for years. The CCD points out that since 2014, Russian media have systematically produced emotional accounts of torture, abductions, and secret prisons supposedly run by Ukrainian authorities. The details shift, the names change, but the core accusation remains the same: Ukraine is torturing civilians in hidden dungeons, and Russia must save them. The problem is that none of these accusations have ever been verified. International human rights organizations, UN monitors, and other independent bodies have spent years documenting abuses in the conflict zone. They have found serious violations on various sides, but they have not found the sprawling network of secret SBU prisons that Russian propaganda describes. This matters, because the absence of evidence is not an oversight. It is a pattern. When a story is repeated for a decade without a single confirmed case, it is not an investigation—it is a campaign. The CCD’s statement emphasizes this, noting that Russian propagandists keep returning to the “secret prisons” theme because it works. It feeds preexisting suspicions, fuels anger, and creates a sense of moral urgency that can be used to justify almost anything. The phrase “secret SBU prisons” has become a kind of code in Russian media, a way to trigger an emotional reaction without offering any proof. It is a story that does not need to be true to be useful. It only needs to be repeated often enough to feel real. And the more often it appears, the harder it becomes for ordinary people to separate what is actually happening from what they are being told is happening. That is the point of information warfare: not to convince you of one lie, but to make you unsure of every truth.
The CCD’s deeper point is that this is not just about one fake story. The systematic return to the “secret prisons” narrative is a deliberate strategy, not a random propaganda impulse. The Kremlin needs a story that makes its invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territories look noble. If Russia can convince its own people, and perhaps some people in other countries, that Ukraine is a monstrous state torturing civilians, then Russia’s military intervention can be reframed as a humanitarian mission. That is the real purpose of the “female volunteer from Kramatorsk” and every story like her. She is not being used to expose a crime; she is being used to justify a war. The Kremlin wants to project an image of Russia as the defender and savior of the Donbas population, rushing in to rescue ordinary people from the cruelty of the Ukrainian state. It is a powerful narrative, especially for audiences already predisposed to believe it. But it is also a classic example of projection. While Russian propaganda accuses Ukraine of running secret torture chambers, there is abundant documentation of torture, abuse, and brutal treatment of civilians in the territories that Russia actually occupies. The accusations are a mirror, reflecting the very crimes that Russia has been accused of committing. By shifting the spotlight onto a fictional Ukrainian dungeon, the Kremlin hopes to distract from the real suffering that has been documented in occupied towns and cities. It is a cynical strategy, but it is not complicated. It follows the oldest rule of deception: if you want to hide what you are doing, point loudly at someone else and accuse them of doing it. The world has seen this trick before, in many conflicts, but that does not make it less effective. People want a story that makes sense of chaos, and the story of a heroic Russia saving innocent people from a cruel Ukraine makes sense to many, even if it is built on lies.
It is worth pausing on that contrast. The same week Russian media are spreading stories about a fictional basement in Ukraine, real people in Russian-occupied territories are being subjected to documented abuses. The Center for Countering Disinformation points to the numerous cases of torture and cruel treatment of civilians in the areas controlled by Russian forces. These are not anonymous allegations floating around Telegram. They are cases that have been investigated, documented, and reported by human rights groups and international observers. They include arbitrary detention, beatings, forced disappearances, and other forms of violence that have been systematically recorded. This is the ugly irony of the disinformation campaign: it accuses Ukraine of exactly what Russia is doing. The fake “SBU prisons” are a dark fantasy, but the real suffering in occupied territories is not. The CCD’s statement urges people to notice this asymmetry. When a story appears, the first question should not be “does it fit my worldview?” but “is it true?” and “who benefits from me believing it?” The answer in this case is clear: the only beneficiary is the Kremlin, which wants to use the fabricated image of Ukrainian cruelty as an excuse for its own cruelty. The real prisons, the real torture, the real victims—they are in the territories that Russia has seized, and they are not a propaganda trick. They are people with names, families, and stories that deserve to be told honestly. But honest stories are often less dramatic than invented ones. They do not fit neatly into a narrative of good versus evil. They are messy, complicated, and require effort to understand. That is why propaganda so often wins in the short term: it offers simple answers to difficult questions. The truth, by contrast, asks us to sit with complexity, to accept that both sides in a conflict are capable of terrible things, and to refuse to let one side’s crimes become an excuse for another’s.
The “secret prisons” story is not the only piece of disinformation currently being pushed by Russian sources. The CCD is also warning about a new wave of false claims that Ukraine is planning a mass mobilization of women. Propagandists are circulating fake photographs of draft notices and screenshots of supposed official correspondence, all designed to create panic and resentment. None of this matches reality, but the images look plausible, especially when shared in a hurry by worried parents and confused young people. In another case, a video is being shared online that appears to show the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk, saying something bizarre about “training Ukrainians with a stick.” The CCD says this video is fake and was created using artificial intelligence. It may sound ridiculous to anyone who knows Stefanchuk’s actual public statements, but in the chaotic ecosystem of social media, a convincing fake can spread faster than a correction. These examples show how modern disinformation works. It is not always about big geopolitical narratives. Sometimes it is a small, weird video designed to make Ukrainian leaders look foolish or authoritarian. Sometimes it is a photo of a draft notice that causes anxiety in a family. Each piece serves the same purpose: to destabilize, confuse, and create a fog of information in which the truth becomes difficult to find. The Russian information machine is not picky. It will use a woman’s tears, a fake government document, or a digital clone of a politician’s face—whatever works. The technology behind these fakes is getting better, which means the old rule of “seeing is believing” no longer applies. A video can be entirely invented. A photograph can be manipulated in seconds. A voice can be imitated. In this environment, the most dangerous thing a person can do is trust their instincts without checking the source. The instincts are exactly what the propagandists are aiming at. They want you to react before you think, to share before you verify, to feel before you ask questions. The only defense is a habit of skepticism that is strong enough to override the reflex to share something shocking.
So what are ordinary people supposed to do in the middle of this information storm? The CCD’s advice is simple but hard to practice: look at the source, check the evidence, and do not let an emotional story replace independent confirmation. If a story comes only from Russian state media, or from anonymous Telegram channels, that does not automatically mean it is false, but it does mean it should be treated with suspicion. If the claims have not been verified by reputable international human rights organizations, that is a red flag. And if the story is perfectly designed to make you angry, scared, or desperate to share it, that is exactly when you should pause. The goal of disinformation is not to make you believe one particular lie. The goal is to make you stop believing in anything, to exhaust your ability to tell truth from fiction, and to turn the world into a blur of competing narratives. The way to resist is not to become an expert in every detail of the conflict. It is to develop a habit of skepticism that is stronger than the pull of outrage. It is to demand evidence, to trust institutions that have proven themselves, and to remember that real victims deserve more than manufactured stories. The woman in the video may be fake, but the people suffering in occupied territories are real. Their stories matter, and they should not be drowned out by propaganda. In the end, the best answer to a false story is not just a correction—it is a stubborn commitment to the truth, even when the truth is messier and less dramatic than the lies. It is a commitment to asking one more question, waiting one more hour, and refusing to let a carefully crafted illusion tell us whom to hate, whom to fear, and whom to trust. That is not always satisfying. It does not give us the rush of righteous anger. But it is the only way to keep our heads in a world where lies are manufactured as easily as headlines. And it is exactly what the Kremlin does not want us to do.