Pro-Russian reports are reporting that an indoor ski area has opened in Kiev. They attach a short video of the skiers descending to their recordings. The recording took place in a completely different place.
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As we wrote many times in Konkret24, one of the goals of Russia's disinformation is to stop Western aid to Ukraine. One way is to spread the message that Kiev is wasting the aid.
In recent days, this message has returned to Polish social networks. That's thanks to a few seconds of video showing the giant indoor ski slope and skiers and snowboarders. The cameraman films from above, from the cable, and then directly from the slope. You can also see an elevator and a castle-like building with turrets.
The video also reads in Cyrillic: “The first indoor ski resort has opened in Kyiv. Admission is 400 hryvnias for a three-hour stay. 25 percent discount for the military” (translation by the editor).
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“We know what the money sent to Ukraine is for. In Kiev, the elevator – “Protasiv Yar” was opened. And in Poland, the price of electricity and food is getting more expensive day by day, to have fun in Kiev do”; “Meanwhile, in war-torn Kiev, they opened an artificial slope under the roof – war is war, but it has to go somewhere, and stupid Poland is bleeding money and weapons (for free)”; “A ski lift opened in Kyiv – Protasiv Yar,” pro-Russian accounts wrote in Polish (original spelling).
The record shows the tag of the account that previously posted the video on TikTok. We checked and it has over 700,000. view There are also several other records from the same place, which are also marked as Kiev.
Tiktok account works in Russian. According to the description, it should depict the events of Kyiv and its surroundings. From the records published there during the war, one gets the impression that life there was peaceful and luxurious. People are shown spending their free time at a zoo, an amusement park, in luxurious homes, or dining in fancy restaurants.
More than 700 comments in Russian were written under this video, as if the Internet users in Kiev were angry: “Can someone explain where all this money is coming from?”; “For money for defense and fortification”; “Where is the war?” – they write under the video.
We checked what is actually visible in the popular record.
This is not Kyiv
In fact, the video does not show a slope in Kiev, but the largest indoor ski resort Wintastar Shanghai, which was built in the eastern district of this city – Pudong. It can be easily recognized by the characteristic buildings of the center of the resort.
The conclusion is that someone from the Chinese center took a recording from the Internet, then wrote in Cyrillic letters that it is Kiev and uploaded it back to the Internet. In addition, he reversed the recording to make it more difficult to find the original. We did not succeed.
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The center of Shanghai has 90,000 square meters. However, if we also include luxury hotels, shops and a water park that will be built there, it will reach PLN 350,000. square meters. There are three slopes with different inclinations. One of them has the standard of Olympic training. Construction started in 2018. The center will finally open in September 2024.
The slope of Kyiv works despite the war
Therefore, the record does not show the new headquarters of Protasiv Yar in Kyiv, as pro-Russian accounts claim. Although this is actually the name of the Kyiv elevators. But it was not only discovered, but it has been working for more than ten years. It is eight hundred meters of slopes with ski lifts that operate just one kilometer from St. Peter's Cathedral. Mikolaya and two kilometers away from the central station.
They are working now, during the war years. In February 2023, the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” talked to skiers who went down there. “They talk with a smile, everything seems normal, I feel myself in our ski lifts, in Prato Nevoso in Piedmont or in Canazei in the Dolomites. We see how a short descent allows people to have a moment to forget the horror of war,” writes the newspaper.
Main image source: Tik Tok
