Did Meta remove a Czech freelance reporter's Facebook post and delete her profile because she wrote that Kyiv is a normal functioning city? No, that's not true: the journalists removed the post where she described everyday life in Kyiv and her journey to Ukraine, saying she had received abusive threats from social media users.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published by TikTok on Aug. 14 with a caption in Czech, translated by Lead Stories staff, reading:
Where does the money sent to Ukraine disappear? A Ukrainian was surprised by carefree life in Kyiv
The caption continued:
You cannot tell there is a war from Kyiv. Everyone is walking around, restaurants are working, everyone is having fun....After these facts were published by Czech journalist Marketa Kutilova, Facebook not only removed her post, but also deleted her profile.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Aug 16 06:56:34 2023 UTC)
Marketa Kutilova´s Facebook profile can be found here. In it, Kutilova wrote on July 13th that she removed her post and deactivated her Facebook profile for five days because of the hateful reaction to it. She wrote:
A feud broke out under this post and I was accused of lying and hurting Ukraine, others were swearing at Ukrainians or at each other. At the same time, I received insults and threats. So I closed the post.
Kutilova explained that after she removed it, screenshots of her post started circulating on social media, with fabricated reasons for its removal. She also received hate messages and deactivated her Facebook profile for five days. Examples of how the social media users falsely speculated about the reasons for the post´ removal can be found here or here.
There was no pressure on her to remove the post from Facebook, or the Czech state TV, for which she occasionally reports on a freelance basis, Kutilova writes. Instead, she describes how her post was misused in "a textbook example" of how misinformation is spread, along with a sense of fear and danger.
Her statement includes a screenshot of the original post, which she removed from her profile. It described her train journey to Kyiv with women and children traveling to meet their relatives, the western part of Ukraine, which she says appeared to be functioning normally, with shops overflowing with goods, and a description of Kyiv as a beautiful city full of life, protected by its anti-missile systems. It goes on to say that "unfortunately, the further east, the greater the danger" and that a rocket killed 13 people in a pizzeria in Kramatorsk that week.
In an interview with DVTV on July 13, Kutilova compared the situation in Ukraine to her experience in 2022, when she witnessed an atmosphere of danger and fear even in the western part of the country. She says she has traveled to Ukraine several times since the Russian invasion began, and in the post published on Facebook, she wanted to praise Ukrainian civilians for their effort to live a normal life under extreme circumstances.
Marketa Kutilova is a freelance journalist who has reported from war zones, including Syria and Upper Karabakh for various publications, including the Czech National TV channel.
