Fake refugee stars in Kremlin PR war

Wearing an expensive-looking black fur coat and designer sunglasses, the woman appeared oddly out of place as she handed out loaves to the starving residents of the war-torn Ukrainian town of Debaltsevo.

But to millions of television viewers in the Russian-speaking world, hers was a familiar face: Maria Tsypko has become an unlikely media star – and object of ridicule – after regularly popping up in a variety of guises in proKremlin news coverage of the war in eastern Ukraine.

Tsypko’s emergence as a ‘‘humanitarian worker’’ in Debaltsevo, shortly after the town was taken by separatist militias last month, was only the latest in a series of her appearances on mainstream media.

In recent months, Tsypko, who appears to be in her late 30s, has featured on major Russian channels in broadcasts from a dozen cities from Moscow to Odessa on the Black Sea, each time playing a different role and often using a different name.

Once she posed as a pro-Kremlin protester in the eastern city of Kharkov; another, as a mother of soldiers sent by the Ukrainian army to the front; and yet another as a lawyer co-ordinating an unauthorised referendum on independence in the separatist stronghold of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

Maria Tsypko is pictured in several of her many guises on Russian television.

For some of the reports she appeared to have dyed her hair red, although she retained her trademark thick golden necklace and pair of heavy golden earrings.

Whatever identity Tsypko assumed, the underlying message was the same: as a local affected by the Ukrainian conflict, she was expressing her grievances against the Kiev government.

Tsypko appears part of a sophisticated information war waged by the Kremlin’s propaganda machinery – which seems ready to stoop to outright fabrication to get its message across. In most reports, including a notable one from Crimea recorded after the peninsula was snatched from Ukraine by Russia in February last year, Tsypko is an emotional witness. She often breaks down into tears, sobbing as she details the ordeals that she and those close to her have suffered at the hands of the authorities in Kiev.

In one interview, in which she claims to be a refugee from Odessa, she urges President Vladimir Putin to allow all Russian-speakers in Ukraine to flee to Russia ‘‘like Jews fleeing to Israel’’ because of the persecution they allegedly face at home. ‘‘She is the star of Russian propaganda about Ukraine, but she is also one of many similar people, mostly women, that resurface in various media reports,’’ said Yevhen Fedchenko, co-founder of stopfake.org, a website dedicated to exposing Russian propaganda.

‘‘One would think it’s odd for whoever is doing that to be using the same person so many times, but then Russian audiences are not used to challenging propaganda – they have switched off critical thinking.’’

The Sunday Times tracked Tsypko down in Moscow. The mother of two, who originally comes from Odessa, denied she appeared in different media reports and claimed only to work for an Orthodox Christian charity called the New Martyrs and Confessors of Christ Fund.

Tsypko’s charity, according to its website, is linked to extremist groups including the Russian Orthodox Army and Phantom Brigade, two armed militias fighting against Kiev’s forces in east Ukraine. outside her Moscow apartment on Putin’s birthday in 2006. The person who ordered the killing has never been identified.