Imagine you author an article about a hot topic like the Russo-Ukraine war and US President Donald Trump’s potential peace push that is based on another 10 days-old article that has no author and no source, twist some parts of the already disinformative article, and present it as fact to your multimillion audience.
This is not an SNL sketch but a real story that took place today.
On 6 February 2025, Daily Mail published a piece by Perkin Amalaraj with a provocative title, “Trump peace plan for Ukraine’ is ‘leaked’: Talks with Putin, ceasefire by Easter and an end to Zelensky’s NATO dream among details in report.”
“US President Donald Trump will try to force Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to a ceasefire with Russia by Easter under a peace plan, according to a report,” the opening paragraph reads.
Which “report” is it exactly comes into light only in the third paragraph: “The unconfirmed plans, reported by Ukrainian outlet Strana, have been doing the rounds in ‘political and diplomatic circles’ in Ukraine, and will include a ceasefire by April 20 that would freeze Russia’s steady advance, a ban on Ukraine from joining NATO, and a demand for Kyiv to accept Russian sovereignty on annexed land.”
This is where we have to stop: Strana.ua is a well-known scandalous pro-Russian online portal founded by Ukrainian traitor Ihor Huzhva, who was sanctioned by Ukraine in 2021 for acting in the interests of another country, Russia. He’s described by the Chesno civil society initiative that monitors public figures in Ukraine as a “Pro-Russian journalist, founder of the online publication “Strana.ua.” Huzhva’s projects, “Vesti” and “Strana.ua,” have repeatedly been accused of supporting separatism, militants of the so-called “L-DNR,” working for the aggressor state Russia, and publishing materials containing distorted, manipulative facts and outright fakes.“
He fled Ukraine in 2018 after a criminal case was opened against him and is reportedly living in Austria where he sought asylum.
The second shock came after we tried searching for the original article as it was not hyperlinked.
Titled “Truce by Easter, peace by 9 May. Political circles are discussing Trump’s 100 days on Ukraine,” it has no author and no source and was apparently published on 26 January 2025.
“In recent days, political and diplomatic circles in Ukraine have been actively discussing a purported plan and timeline allegedly drawn up by Donald Trump and his team to end the war in 100 days,” the opening line reads.
Predictably, there’s no mention of who makes up these so-called “political and diplomatic circles” that nonetheless appear to have such detailed information on how the plan would look like, including specific dates like 9 May when Moscow celebrates Victory Day.
Unlike Daily Mail, we will refrain from presenting the details of this “plan” as it is neither credible nor necessary.
Disinformative disinformation
Arguably, the most bizarre part of this story is not only that Daily Mail allowed its journalist Perkin Amalaraj to use a shady media outlet as a source for his article, but that he managed to further twist the information provided there.
While we don’t know whether Amalaraj is fluent in Russian and whether he used a translation service to translate the piece, but his article contains things that were never mentioned in the original version.
For example, that Kyiv would be forced to accept Russian sovereignty over its occupied land.
“Ukraine renounces military and diplomatic attempts to reclaim the occupied territories but does not officially recognize Russia’s sovereignty over them,” the article reads.
How and why the claim made by Amalaraj ended up in the article in principle is perplexing. More so since if you run the Russian line through ChatGPT or Google Translate, it’ll produce accurate results.
Faking fakes is quite an unprecedented journalistic practice, especially for Westen media.
It is likewise unclear why Amalaraj chose to present the entire article as fact, though based on “unconfirmed reports”, as even the author of the original piece admitted that there’s no guarantee that this plan isn’t just a compilation of the publicly made statements. Here’s what they wrote: “It should be noted that, at this moment, we do not have confirmation of the authenticity of this “plan.” It could indeed be a plan drafted by Trump’s team, or it might be an “apocryphal” document compiled based on the “Kellogg Plan,” which was made public last year before the US presidential elections. There are indications pointing to both possibilities.”
Finally, it is unclear in principle how Amalaraj ended up finding the article in the first place. We do not know the modus operandi of Daily Mail’s journalists, but it is eyebrow-raising that an article that is 10 days old comes just one day after Bloomberg published an article on the potential plan, with US Special Peace Envoy Keith Kellogg promising to unveil the details at the upcoming Munich Security Conference.
Regardless, the damage is done as the Daily Mail’s website reaches some 24 million readers per month in the UK alone. The article has likewise been shared on platforms like X, with people accepting it as factual information authored by Daily Mail, not Strana.ua.
We call on the Daily Mail to take down the article, scrutinize the sources used for publishing such pieces, and refrain from sharing information that, in the words of one of our followers, could well be authored by “Pladimir Vutin.”
