U.S. Lawmaker Pushes a Falsehood About Ukrainian Protests and Russian Media Outlets Quickly Seize on It
By Eva Maitland
What happened: U.S. Congresswoman Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene and pro-Kremlin sources are falsely claiming that large protests in Ukraine on July 22 were sparked by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s supposed refusal to make a peace deal with Russia.
Context: On July 22, Ukraine’s parliament passed a bill granting the prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, control over anti-corruption efforts. The move enabled Kravchenko, a presidential appointee, to decide which corruption cases to investigate and which ones to close.
Critics — including officials from the European Union — have said that the change undermines a decade of anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, warning that it could jeopardize Ukraine’s path to EU membership. Large demonstrations broke out in Ukraine in protest of the legislation.
A closer look: Rep. Greene of Georgia, a Republican member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, is now suggesting that the protests were directed against Zelensky for continuing the war with Russia.
A July 22 X post by Greene, who has 4.9 million followers on the platform, stated, “Huge protests erupt in Kyiv against Ukrainian President Zelensky as he is a dictator and refuses to make a peace deal and end the war … America must STOP funding and sending weapons!!!” The post gained 3.3 million views and 77,000 likes in less than 24 hours.
Greene’s claim was then repeated uncritically by pro-Kremlin sources, including on X by Russian state media outlets RT (Trust Score: 20/100) and Sputnik (Trust Score: 17.5/100), and on Telegram by Russian state news hosts Vladimir Solovyev and Olga Skabeyeva. Greene’s post was also amplified in multiple articles by the Pravda network (Trust Score: 7.5/100) of Moscow-based news sites that regularly publish false claims.
Actually: Again, the protests, which were the largest demonstrations in Ukraine since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion, were a response to the new Ukrainian anti-corruption law.
Outlets including The Guardian (Trust Score: 100/100) and the Kyiv Independent (Trust Score: 85/100) reported that protesters chanted slogans including "Veto the law!" and "No corruption in government.”
Those involved in organizing the protests have explicitly stated in social media posts that their purpose was to protest the new bill. News coverage and social media posts from protesters state that the protests were driven by concerns that the legislation could derail Ukraine’s EU accession and roll back democratic reforms.
On July 24, President Zelensky responded to the protests by proposing a new law that he said would restore the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies.
Zooming out: Posts from Greene are often cited by Russian state media as validation of anti-Ukraine narratives and used to bolster the narrative that U.S. lawmakers are increasingly turning against Kyiv. NewsGuard found that Greene previously advanced the false claim that Zelensky purchased luxury yachts using U.S. military aid.
NewsGuard sent an email to Greene’s congressional office seeking comment on her post but did not receive a response.
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