In the middle of a war that has already shattered millions of lives, a new kind of weapon has appeared—one made not of steel and gunpowder, but of pixels and lies. Russia is currently waging a disinformation campaign against Ukraine, pushing a cruel and false narrative that Ukrainian women are being forcibly drafted into the armed forces. The claim is as dangerous as it is absurd, and Kyiv has identified it as a deliberate attempt to sow panic, spread anxiety, and undermine the country’s voluntary military recruitment efforts at a time when the Kremlin’s position on the battlefield is weakening.…

The woman on the screen looks like someone you might know—or wish you did. She is Dona Maria, a straight-talking, middle-aged Black woman with a sharp tongue and a no-nonsense attitude. In her videos, she looks directly into the camera, her voice rising with frustration as she rails against the policies of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “They line their pockets with our sweat!” she declares in one widely shared clip about rising electricity bills. Her anger feels visceral, her words resonate with the kind of everyday bitterness that spreads quickly in a country where inequality is a…