The news about the return of the Tisza tributaries to their natural state was used by Russian propaganda

What started it all?

A few days ago, we reported on FB about the progress of the project “Demolition of river dams of the Tisza catchment basin and restoration of floodplains for particularly valuable areas” in cooperation with the Carpathian Biosphere Reserve. Let’s emphasize that it is about disassembling completely destroyed and rotted structures at the small tributaries of the upper reaches of the Tisza basin at the expense of a foreign donor, in order to restore the natural banks of mountain rivers and protect roads and bridges from erosion, for the restoration of which the reserve constantly has to spend money. In particular, it is about
a stone embankment on the bank of the White stream, which was built to protect the road from floods in 1998. Today, it not only does not fulfill its function of protecting the road, but on the contrary – directs the riverbed onto the road, which increases the destructive consequences of floods, and also creates the effect of a “channeled river” and distorts the bank of the stream, near which the tourist route to Mount Hoverla runs;
the remains of two sluices (on the Kvasny and Bohdan streams), which were built about 100 years ago for drifting wood downstream. Today, the remains of the locks do not perform any economic function and direct the flow towards the shore, which leads to its erosion and the destruction of roads. The wood of these remaining structures has completely rotted, so they pose a threat both to tourists who want to see them, and to destructive consequences for roads, bridges and settlements downstream during floods. The natural slopes of the reserve with valuable adjacent groups have undergone significant destruction as a result of long-term erosion. Today, the rotten wood, entwined with roots, overgrown with moss and mixed with stones brought by floods, cannot be restored. In addition, nearby in the community Bohdan is a sluice on the Hoverlyansky stream, which is relatively well-preserved, intact, but needs immediate work (and funds) for its preservation. It is not the subject of our project.
More Ukrainian mass media – both regional and national – wrote about our project.

A wave of hatred

After the publication on the Facebook page of one of the regional mass media of Transcarpathia, Mukachevo.net https://bit.ly/3YqvuUU, dozens of negative and even aggressive comments began to appear in the comments. At best, the project implementers were accused of wasting budget funds (recall that the project is financed by the European Open Rivers Program fund, the purpose of which is to demolish dams to restore free-flowing rivers and restore biodiversity). But dozens of commentators claimed that this project is designed to make “Ukraine a prison”, to turn our country “into North Korea”, to deprive Ukrainians of the remnants of freedom, and to make the Tisza deeper and faster in order to “make it impossible to escape from Ukraine”, because the Tisza – “this is the last gulp of freedom for Ukrainians.”
It seemed that people either did not read the news at all and limited themselves only to the headline, or were completely unfamiliar with the area and issues, so they misunderstood the message. We will leave the anti-Ukrainian position of the commentators without comment, although, responding to criticism, we also reminded that illegal crossing of the state border is a crime.
We believe in the power of eco-education, so we tried to explain the real purpose and reason for the project in the comments, but the wave of hate only grew.

Stopfake.org explained everything

The cause of the wave of hatred became clear thanks to the work of the Stopfake.org website https://bit.ly/3YtYGKA. As it turned out, these strange comments that appeared en masse under the news about our project were neither a mistake nor a misunderstanding, but a purposeful manipulation of Russian bots, and now they are spreading the lie invented by them in Russia that this environmental protection project with the return of the channel of the small tributaries of the Tisza to its natural state is actually intended to deepen the Tisza River. “In the upper reaches of the Tisza River, three dams will be demolished in order to increase the current and prevent illegal departure from Ukraine by men of military age – this is the news spread by pro-Russian sources,” wrote Stopfake. As it turned out, pro-Russian channels are distributing screenshots of our news, however, they write that the reason is not the restoration of the free flow of the river and the support of biodiversity, but “the fight against evasions”.

We thank Stopfake.org for this work in debunking myths. We also thank all Ukrainians for their supportive comments. However, we urge Ukrainians to be more meticulous about information hygiene, to trust only verified sources and to remember that the enemy is constantly trying to slander Ukraine and split the unity of our society.