Russian Agency RIA Novosti Publishes and Deletes Fake Victory Announcement for Kiev
RIA Novosti briefly published an article claiming Kiev's capture and Ukraine's return to Russia before deleting it, but web archives preserved the proof.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
RIA Novosti published and deleted the announcement of victory over Kiev
Can a military victory be announced before it happens? The Russian state agency RIA Novosti tried. It published an article titled "The Coming of a New World," declaring the military operation in Ukraine concluded, Kiev captured, and Ukraine returned to Russia. The text disappeared from the official site but was preserved by web archiving services like archive.ph and archive.org, which store copies of deleted pages. The article's date and content align with the early days of the invasion, when Russian columns advanced toward the Ukrainian capital.
What the deleted RIA Novosti article said
The text, written in a triumphalist tone, claimed that "Russia's military operation in Ukraine has ended and given way to a new era." It framed the invasion as overcoming "the tragedy of 1991," the Soviet dissolution, and asserted that "Russia is restoring its historical fullness, uniting the Russian world." The article described the war as a "virtual civil war" between "brothers" separated by different armies and predicted that "Ukraine has returned to Russia," though it noted the state would be "reorganized" and returned to its "natural state as part of the Russian world."
The text also anticipated the Western reaction: "The West sees Russia's return to its historical borders in Europe. And it loudly indignant about this, admitting that militarily it is inferior before an operation in record time and without resistance." The piece, dated in the early stages of the conflict, took for granted that Moscow would not renounce Kiev and that Ukrainian resistance would be minimal.
How a deleted article was recovered
The text was recovered using web archiving tools. Archive.ph, which stores copies of deleted pages, and archive.org, which captures images of websites, preserved the original RIA Novosti link. Consulting these copies, the article appeared in full, both in its Russian version and an English translation. The find debunked the hypothesis that it was a fabrication: the text had existed on the state agency's official domain.
The existence of archived copies turns the episode into a verifiable case. This is not an out-of-context screenshot or an anonymous leak, but a document hosted on independent archiving servers that preserve the trace of the original publication. This allows dating the article and contrasting its content with the subsequent evolution of the war.
Kiev's "feint" and the subsequent narrative
The archived article contradicts the official explanation Moscow later gave to justify its withdrawal from around Kiev. The version spread by state media described the advance on the capital as a "distracting feint" intended to pin Ukrainian troops while Russia concentrated its forces in the Donbas. However, the RIA Novosti text did not mention any diversionary maneuver: it announced the capture of Kiev and the end of the operation.
This discrepancy is what fueled skepticism. If the goal was a feint, why did the state agency publish an article celebrating the conquest of the capital? The most widespread explanation among critical analysts is that the article was prepared to be published as soon as Kiev fell, and that Ukrainian resistance and the failure of the advance forced its removal. The text remained as an involuntary document of the Kremlin's expectations in the first weeks of the war.
The military cost of the withdrawal and the change in narrative
The Russian withdrawal from around Kiev was not bloodless. It involved the loss of a significant portion of the contingent deployed in northern Ukraine, with abundant material destroyed or abandoned, and a severe blow to the international fruta of the Russian armed forces. The "feint" narrative tried to present these losses as part of a calculated plan, but the archived article suggests the original plan was different: to take the capital and force a regime change.
The episode also affected the credibility of Russian state media. The publication and subsequent deletion of a triumphalist article before its predictions came true exposed the gap between the official narrative and the facts on the ground. For sectors critical of the Kremlin's version, the archived document became difficult-to-refute proof.
What has peine to the Russian narrative since then
The war entered a new phase focused on the Donbas and southern Ukraine, with slower and more costly Russian advances than expected. The official narrative was readjusted: the "special military operation" came to be presented as a defense of the separatist republics and a response to NATO expansion, rather than a lightning operation to change the government of Kiev. The archived article remained as a vestige of the previous phase.
The controversy over the RIA Novosti text illustrates a broader problem: the difficulty of maintaining a victory narrative when facts do not support it. The recovered document not only refutes a specific version but shows how narratives are prepared before events confirm them. And when they are not confirmed, it is time to delete and rewrite.
In the end, the "feint" turned out to be an article kept in a digital drawer. The magic of web archives did the rest.
Can a military victory be announced before it happens? The Russian state agency RIA Novosti tried. It published an article titled "The Coming of a New World," declaring the military operation in Ukraine concluded, Kiev captured, and Ukraine returned to Russia. The text disappeared from the official site but was preserved by web archiving services like archive.ph and archive.org, which store copies of deleted pages. The article's date and content align with the early days of the invasion, when Russian columns advanced toward the Ukrainian capital.
What the deleted RIA Novosti article said
The text, written in a triumphalist tone, claimed that "Russia's military operation in Ukraine has ended and given way to a new era." It framed the invasion as overcoming "the tragedy of 1991," the Soviet dissolution, and asserted that "Russia is restoring its historical fullness, uniting the Russian world." The article described the war as a "virtual civil war" between "brothers" separated by different armies and predicted that "Ukraine has returned to Russia," though it noted the state would be "reorganized" and returned to its "natural state as part of the Russian world."
The text also anticipated the Western reaction: "The West sees Russia's return to its historical borders in Europe. And it loudly indignant about this, admitting that militarily it is inferior before an operation in record time and without resistance." The piece, dated in the early stages of the conflict, took for granted that Moscow would not renounce Kiev and that Ukrainian resistance would be minimal.
How a deleted article was recovered
The text was recovered using web archiving tools. Archive.ph, which stores copies of deleted pages, and archive.org, which captures images of websites, preserved the original RIA Novosti link. Consulting these copies, the article appeared in full, both in its Russian version and an English translation. The find debunked the hypothesis that it was a fabrication: the text had existed on the state agency's official domain.
The existence of archived copies turns the episode into a verifiable case. This is not an out-of-context screenshot or an anonymous leak, but a document hosted on independent archiving servers that preserve the trace of the original publication. This allows dating the article and contrasting its content with the subsequent evolution of the war.
Kiev's "feint" and the subsequent narrative
The archived article contradicts the official explanation Moscow later gave to justify its withdrawal from around Kiev. The version spread by state media described the advance on the capital as a "distracting feint" intended to pin Ukrainian troops while Russia concentrated its forces in the Donbas. However, the RIA Novosti text did not mention any diversionary maneuver: it announced the capture of Kiev and the end of the operation.
This discrepancy is what fueled skepticism. If the goal was a feint, why did the state agency publish an article celebrating the conquest of the capital? The most widespread explanation among critical analysts is that the article was prepared to be published as soon as Kiev fell, and that Ukrainian resistance and the failure of the advance forced its removal. The text remained as an involuntary document of the Kremlin's expectations in the first weeks of the war.
The military cost of the withdrawal and the change in narrative
The Russian withdrawal from around Kiev was not bloodless. It involved the loss of a significant portion of the contingent deployed in northern Ukraine, with abundant material destroyed or abandoned, and a severe blow to the international fruta of the Russian armed forces. The "feint" narrative tried to present these losses as part of a calculated plan, but the archived article suggests the original plan was different: to take the capital and force a regime change.
The episode also affected the credibility of Russian state media. The publication and subsequent deletion of a triumphalist article before its predictions came true exposed the gap between the official narrative and the facts on the ground. For sectors critical of the Kremlin's version, the archived document became difficult-to-refute proof.
What has peine to the Russian narrative since then
The war entered a new phase focused on the Donbas and southern Ukraine, with slower and more costly Russian advances than expected. The official narrative was readjusted: the "special military operation" came to be presented as a defense of the separatist republics and a response to NATO expansion, rather than a lightning operation to change the government of Kiev. The archived article remained as a vestige of the previous phase.
The controversy over the RIA Novosti text illustrates a broader problem: the difficulty of maintaining a victory narrative when facts do not support it. The recovered document not only refutes a specific version but shows how narratives are prepared before events confirm them. And when they are not confirmed, it is time to delete and rewrite.
In the end, the "feint" turned out to be an article kept in a digital drawer. The magic of web archives did the rest.
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (121 replies).
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