It is Not True that Western Media Call for Genocide of All Russians

Context is missing from this post. It is true that Melaniya Podolyak wrote the tweet, but later on the tweet was removed for abusing Twitter guidelines. Unlike the contents claimed in her post, her opinions tweeted are not related to her features in Western media. Firstly, the features concerned took place several months before the tweeted post and secondly, her positions refer to Ukrainian needs after Russian invasion and no genocide of Russians was mentioned in the text

We are fact-checking a post published on the social network Facebook claiming that Western media call for genocide of all Russians. The post says that the Ukrainian blogger Melaniya Podolyak, a featured guest on Western media channels, demanded Russia and its people to be “wiped off from the surface of the Earth”.

Podolyak called for genocide last Saturday when the air-defence of her country, apparently, caused a residential area to be hit by a Russian missile.

“It is absolutely fair for me to wish Russians and Russia to be wiped off from the surface of the Earth”, wrote Podolyak on Twitter. “That is not hate-speech, nor am I a terrible person – that is just fair”.

Podolyak shared photographs of a residential area from the Eastern Ukrainian city Dnipro saying that it was devastated by a “Russian missile attack”…

Before demanding the death of more than 143 million people, Podolyak was praised by the West. As a former official of the Ukrainian Parliament, she was presented on NBC News as a “political activist” demanding from the West to send heavy weaponry to Kyiv, while on Fox News she appeared as a “media consultant” calling for sanctions against Moscow. On her YouTube channel, she is offering links to the viewers for donating money to the Ukrainian Army, states the post.

In addition, the post claims that the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly, said that ”the building was hit by a Russian missile, while his adviser, Oleksii Arestovych ”admitted” later on that the missile was shot down by with Ukrainian anti-aircraft weapons due to which the missile hit the building”.

It is not true that Western media call for genocide of all Russians. The tweet mentioned in the post was removed due to abuse of Twitter Community Guidelines, and was not shared with Western media.

True, the Ukrainian activist was a guest in Western media in the past but talking about completely different topics and her features did not promote the idea of genocide. For example, when she was a guest at NBC News, she was presented as an Ukrainian activist who spoke about the state of affairs in Ukraine, including the humanitarian aid arriving (9 months ago when the video was published). At the time she mentioned that a close friend of hers was killed on 23^rd March on the battlefield defending Ukraine and that her other close friends who also joined the defence of Ukraine after the Russian invasion were safe. She requested more weapons then to defend Ukraine and claimed that the only way to force the Russians to leave her country was with more weapons donated to Ukrainian soldiers to fight for the freedom of their country.

When Melaniya Podolyak was a guest on Fox News, on 22^nd February, she spoke about the trust of the Ukrainian Army, asking the West to introduce stricter sanctions and economic measures toward Russia and that in the last 8 years the sanctions imposed by the EU and the USA were supposed to be harsher. Then she says that Ukraine needs the EU and the USA to introduce more austere sanctions against Russia because Putin cared only about what he wanted and that a diplomatic solution was not possible. Podolyak said that Putin corrupted the media, politics, external relations and that the entire global security structure was under threat by him. She elaborated on the fact that Putin was saying that Ukraine was part of Russia and that it was not a real country and, according to her, he did that to undermine the Ukrainian unity including all that Ukraine was building in the last 30 years. In her Fox News feature, she said that if her location was attacked, she would join the Army as a nurse.

Evidently, these two features in the Western media Fox News and NBC News refer to the period prior to the tweet mentioned in the post, which was removed due to abuse of Twitter Community Guidelines. Western media do not call for genocide of all Russians as untruthfully claimed by post we are fact-checking. The guest in the programmes of NBC and Fox News was presenting her views before she wrote the tweet removed and not shared in these programmes. Due to all of the above-mentioned facts, we assess that the post is missing context. It is true that Melaniya Podolyak wrote the tweet, but it was removed by Twitter. Unlike the contents claimed in the post, her Twitter positions are not related to her features in Western media. Firstly, those features were several months before the tweet and secondly, the features refer to her opinions about the needs of Ukraine after the Russian invasion where she does not mention genocide of all Russians at all.

This article has been produced within the project Fact-Checking the Progress of North Macedonia towards the EU, implemented by the Metamorphosis Foundation. The article, originally published by Truthmeter,, is made possible by the support of the American non-profit foundation NED (National Endowment for Democracy). The content of this article is the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Metamorphosis, NED or their partners.

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