Tsunami, venomous spiders and the "explosion" on the Crimean Bridge: what scared Russians in 2025

      23 October 2025 11:38 Society

      From January to September 2025, 3,162 unique fake items were identified in the Russian segment of the network. This is 9% more than in the same period in 2024, when 2,879 were recorded. According to analysts at ANO "Dialog Regions", the current figure is the highest since monitoring of information injections in Russia began.

      At the same time, the total number of copies of fakes for the nine months of 2025 is comparable to 2024 and amounts to 5.5 million. Experts note that while the number of unique injections increased, the overall volume of their distribution remained at last year’s level.

      Head of the Department for Combating the Dissemination of Misinformation at ANO "Dialog Regions", Sergey Maklakov, notes that from January to April 2025 there was a decrease in the number of copies compared with 2024, but from May to September there was a sharp rise that returned the metrics to last year’s values.

      If we single out the main topics, the anti-leaders of 2025 were politics, socially significant incidents, healthcare, information technology and social protection. Most unique injections were related to the political agenda — 1,401 items, 112 more than a year earlier. At the same time, the number of copies in this category fell from 2.59 million to 2.1 million.

      According to Sergey Maklakov, this dynamic is influenced by changing trends and approaches to creating fakes, and by the growing share of regional stories that often gain more reach than federal disinformation. He also points to the work of the unified system for countering fakes, operated by ANO "Dialog Regions".

      In second place by number of unique items are socially significant incidents: 523 fakes for the incomplete year of 2025, 51 fewer than in 2024. Third is healthcare: 217 unique messages, 13 more than the previous year. In the field of information technology, 162 fakes were recorded, 6 more than a year earlier, while their copies increased — 612,000 versus 511,000.

      Experts link this spike in IT-related topics to a series of materials about the MAX messenger. A distinctive feature of this campaign is high distribution activity; analysts also observe that some of the publications are of a non-organic nature.

      Fifth place was taken by social protection — 145 unique fakes in 2025. In 2024 it was not among the top five. The more than twofold increase, from 71 to 145, is primarily explained by a rise in the number of forged official documents. The scale of their distribution in 2025 far outpaces past years, when such cases were isolated.

      The most viewed stories were posts about an alleged massive tsunami near Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky — 361 million views and 57,600 copies; about an "explosion" on the Crimean Bridge — 151.5 million and 50,000; about an invasion of "deadly" spider-wasps — 53 million and 21,000; about the introduction of a unified school uniform — 46.6 million and 14,000; and about the disappearance of Mars products from "Pyaterochka" and "Perekrestok" — 46 million and 28,000 copies.

      Additionally, in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, 91 fakes have been identified since the beginning of 2025: 28 federal and 63 regional. Most often scammers create fake accounts of officials (22), health-related fakes (16), and fakes about various emergencies (15).

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