Twitter users in Ukraine and beyond reacted in surprise and anger over the weekend of Jan. 28-29 after the UK tabloid national newspaper the Sun printed a report that Kyiv was “in ruins” and ranked No. 1 in Europe as a place travelers should avoid.
Using the hashtags #Kyivinruins and #KyivinRuins, Twitter users posted pictures of the top tourist attractions in the Ukrainian capital, along with criticism of the Sun for publishing the report.
The Sun article, authored by Neil Syson and published on Jan. 23, actually focused on the Lincolnshire seaside town of Skegness, which came in ninth in the top-10 worst travel destinations ranking. Apart from Kyiv and Skegness, the destinations included the North Korean capital Pyongyang, Bogata, Columbia, and Mogadishu, Somalia.
In fact, the Sun wasn’t the first to post the report, although it attracted the brunt of the ire of Ukrainians and foreign residents of Kyiv.
A similar report appeared on the ITN (Independent Television News) website on Jan. 22. Two days before that, an almost identical report was published by another UK tabloid national newspaper, the Mirror.
Kyiv. According to @TheSun – in ruins. #KyivInRuins #KievInRuins pic.twitter.com/aPOdNUBTnf
— olexander scherba (@olex_scherba) January 28, 2017
The Mirror article was authored by Mark Page. A day earlier, on Jan. 19, a very similar report authored by a Mark W. Page was published in the Grimsby Telegraph, a local newspaper in Lincolnshire.
But the chain doesn’t stop there.
The day before that, on Jan. 18, another very similar report was published on the Lincolnshirelive website. That report, authored by Elaine Davis, noted that the source of the ranking was a website called Top Destinations. In her report, Davies said a user in a Facebook discussion group had posted a link to the Top Destinations article.
The Top Destinations article, entitled “11 Worst Travel Destinations in the World You Should Skip,” by Sloane Emerson, is dated Nov. 5, 2014, and appears to be the root source of the false information that “Kyiv is in ruins.”
According to the more than two-years-old article, “recent riots have left this industrial metropolis in ruins. Over 4,000 rioters are dead and thousands more injured following a dangerous war that began with demonstrators arguing for Ukraine to join the European Union while government officials fought to maintain the country’s independence.”
#KyivInRuins They’d better change the name from The Sun to The Moon, lunatics pic.twitter.com/239fWo0eJm
— Andrii Olefirov ?? (@AndriiOlefirov) January 29, 2017
That information is false: While there was some damage to property caused by the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan mass anti-government protests, it was largely confined to a small area in the center of the city, and in most cases it was quickly repaired.
Some 130 people have been identified as having been killed as a result of the EuroMaidan protests, including 18 police officers, not 4,000 as the Top Destinations article claimed.
The Sun has since deleted the report, but the copycat articles are still online on at least a half-dozen other news websites.
None of the authors mentioned in this article had responded to requests for comment, or could be contacted, by the time this article was published.
