You must have read the Ukrainian urban legend many times that "the Russian military is stealing toilets."

From the very beginning, I was sure that this was a propaganda fiction - dumb enough to be believed.

But today I decided to look for where it came from.

And found.

For the first time, the mention of “the theft of toilet bowls by the Russian military” appeared in 2008 on Georgian resources, when our country was conducting another military operation in Georgia.

Articles about this were supplied with a photograph: there really are two people in military uniform squatting in front of a toilet bowl on some street.

So, there is photographic evidence of looting, there seems to be no point in going further.

But I went deeper anyway, and you won't believe what happened next.

A simple image search showed that this photograph was taken two years earlier, in 2006, in Moscow, and it depicted a performance by members of the Yabloko party in front of the Defense Ministry building.

They protested, it seems, against the conscription.

The entire action is documented in detail on the Yabloko website.

Do you understand what happened?

Two people who most likely had nothing to do with the RF Armed Forces bought a uniform at Voentorg, bought (or found in a landfill) a toilet bowl, dragged it to the square and scrubbed it with toothbrushes, allegedly depicting the hardships of military service.

Someone took a picture of it and posted it online.

Two years later, the Georgian media found this photo and simply made up a story about the theft of toilet bowls for it.

And after another 14 (!) years, the Ukrainians took this legend into service and simply repeated it, replacing Georgia with Ukraine.

If you don't believe me, just type in Google "Russian military toilets" or some other similar query.

You will see that this photo is the only one that appears in the search results and at least slightly matches the search.

Yes, Ukrainian propaganda works like this.

And I don't have another one for you.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.