You're reading: Sasha Grey reacts to ‘news’ of her death in Donbas

On Feb. 18 a certain photo of American porn star Sasha Grey went viral in Russian social network Vkontakte. Yet it contained no nudity or any reference to Grey's profession.

Instead, it
was posted as a photo of a Donbas war victim.

One of many
Vkontakte political pages used Grey’s photo to go with a story of a fictional
nurse Aleksandra Serova (a literal translation of Grey’s name in Russian), who,
the post said, supported pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s Donbass and was
taken captive and killed by Ukrainian forces.

Grey reacted
to the fake in her Twitter.

“I love my
Russian fans, but this propaganda has gone too far!” she wrote and attached a
screenshot of the Vkontakte post.

“People are
dying. People are losing family members and besides outlets mock the deceased,”
the actress wrote, adding that she loves and respect all her Russian and
Ukrainian fans and wishes there would be more she could do.

Grey, 26, has quit porn business in 2011 to try herself in other fields, but is still most known as an adult movies star.

The false
post reads that “delicate but strong” nurse Serova-Grey carried out the wounded
rebels from the battle field and saved a few injured militants. Ironically, the
post said that before killing her, her offenders have raped the woman and filmed
it, which seems like a clear hint to Grey’s career as porn actress, suggesting
that whoever made the fake knew who the woman in the photo really was.

The actress
tweeted that she was labeled “a friend of junta” by propaganda because she
didn’t show public support to the Russia-backed insurgents.

“So to make it
clear first I was the enemy and now I’m a friend because this was supposedly
the fault of Ukrainians,” she said.

In fact the
fake post was first made up for fun by users of a Russian website www.2ch.uk and then picked up by the administrators
of the Vkontakte group who didn’t figure out it was a joke and shared it as
real news. Photo received over 4,000 likes and a lot of attention beyond
Vkontakte group.

It’s not the
first time that pro-Russian online outlets use fakes in order to inflame hatred
towards Ukrainians. In October 2014 one of the most popular social network pages
of the separatists’ supporters published a story of a 16-year-old girl Valeria
Lyahova from Lysychansk who reportedly “died heroically under a tank.” It
turned out that the story was untrue and the photo for was stolen from a page
of a schoolgirl living in Kaliningrad, Russia.