Russia warns of Ukrainian scammers, Hungarian government bandwagons

Recently, Vladimir Putin publicly spoke about cracking down on Ukrainian scammers targeting Russian citizens. It seems to have inspired Viktor Orbán and the pro-government media to launch a fearmongering campaign on the same subject. From late may, Ukrainian scammers suddenly became one of the biggest problems in Hungary, according to government propaganda channels.

Since May, Fidesz’s communications machine has relentlessly spotlighted an alleged threat posed by Ukrainian online scammers. According to Átlátszó’s calculations, in May and June alone, more than 250 pieces mentioning Ukrainian scammers appeared in government-aligned media — several times more than in the previous five months combined.

This coverage serves to support the ongoing “Vote 2025” campaign, the latest installment of the non-binding, manipulative “national consultations”, this opposing Ukraine’s fast-track EU ascension. The focus on Ukrainian scammers fits neatly into a campaign fueled by visceral xenophobia: pro-government channels do not only argue against Ukraine’s EU membership on economic ground, but by generally equating Ukrainian people with criminality.

Online scammers, after all, are not beholden to EU borders; Ukraine’s EU membership has no impact.

The tone was set by Viktor Orbán’s video on May 27, in which the Prime Minister claimed that 80 percent of online scams are committed by Ukrainians. There is no public evidence to support this; Oxford University’s cybercrime index ranks Ukraine second after Russia.

Overnight, Ukrainian scammers have become one of the country’s biggest threats

Under the pretext of an onslaught of Ukrainian scams, a government meeting was urgently convened. Since then, the pro-government media empire has been churning out wall-to-wall coverage of cybercrimes allegedly committed by Ukrainian nationals.

Every major pro-government media outlet is participating in the campaign, including the public broadcaster, TV2, HírTV, Magyar Nemzet, and the regional newspapers of Mediaworks. The latter scare readers with centrally produced articles about Ukrainian scammers – take, for example, articles like “Tips against Ukrainian scammers — how to protect your money from Them.” The latter article contained basic cybersecurity instructions, nothing particular to Ukrainian cybercrime.

Fake videos

The Hungarian anti-Ukrainian scammers campaign is modeled after Russian propaganda on the same topic. Alleged Ukrainian phone scams first appeared in Russian disinformation campaigns targeted at foreign audiences in 2023.

In the second half of 2023, social media accounts linked to Russia circulated fake videos pretending to be from Israeli outlets like the Times of Israel. These videos falsely claimed that Ukrainian scammers were targeting Israeli citizens, warning them that Hamas planned to hack their bank accounts and advising them to transfer their money to a “safe account” — which was controlled by the scammers.

These reports, it turned out, were not from any Israeli outlet; the creators illegally edited the logos onto fake videos.

One of the videos claimed the Israeli victims lost $30 million, while another cited $1.8 million and a third had $2 million in losses. In 2024, a new fake Times of Israel video emerged, claiming that Ukrainian scammers swindled $80 million by pretending to collect donations for the Israeli army.

Also last year, pro-Russian channels circulated a fake Deutsche Welle report about Ukrainian hackers allegedly targeting German citizens’ money. The video claims that the Berlin police warned people not to connect to unknown Wi-Fi networks because Ukrainian scammers supposedly steal users’ bank card data. DW never aired anything like this report, and the Berlin police never issued this warning.

Scams in Russia: intelligence games

Reports of Ukrainian cyberattacks targeting Russian citizens have more veracity. However, instead of regular fraudsters, these attacks often bear the marks of Ukrainian intelligence services, or semi-legal hackers working for them. Russian services have long employed similar “subcontractors”, such as the hacker group Fancy Bear and other “patriotic hackers” recruited by intelligence operatives.

Ukrainian cyber scams targeting Russians, which are part of the cyber warfare being waged between the two countries, are aimed at draining the population’s resources or creating chaos behind enemy lines.

Last year, the British Telegraph interviewed a Ukrainian hacker group called the Monetary Army.

They admitted to using fake dating profiles, crypto scams, and other tricks to extract money from Russians, part of which they donate to defense efforts.

According to the paper, the group was formed in 2020, before the full-scale invasion.

During the COVID pandemic, they lured Russian men in through popular dating sites. After the war began, their numbers grew to around 100 members. One newer member stated: “Considering they bombed a lot it didn’t hurt my conscience.”

Ukrainian scammers – most likely, at the behest of intelligence services – may be behind operations that aim to both steal money and sow disorder in Russia. Since the start of the war, dozens of recruitment offices, military and police buildings, and bank branches have been set on fire in Russia. According to a report by the independent Russian news outlet Mediazone,

these crimes have recently been carried out mostly not as political protests, but under the blackmail of scammers.

According to Mediazone, several people (many of them elderly) who were arrested testified in court that before committing the arson, bank scammers had stolen their money or taken out huge loans in their name. The scammers then told them that they could get their money back if they did them a “favor” in return.

One arsonist, a retired woman, said that in August 2023 people posing as security officials called her and convinced her that her savings were at risk. Following their instructions, she took out a loan equivalent to 2000 Euros and transferred the money to a “safe” account — which was then stolen. The “security officials” then persuaded her that if she helped catch the scammers, she would get a reward. They explained that she needed to set fire to the building where the scammers were supposedly hiding to flush them out. The building was a recruitment office.

Others were likewise deceived into believing they would get their money back if they participated in a “special operation” supposedly serving the Russian state’s interests: one woman said she was told that the targeted building housed people planning to fight for Ukraine, so they needed to be smoked out. A man poured ink into a ballot box during the presidential election — he said the scammers told him he was helping destroy “fake ballots”.

Orbán’s speech boosted in Russian media

Over the past two years, Russian state media has regularly reported on Ukrainian scams targeting Russian citizens. Some reports claim that scammers first send money to the victim’s bank account with a note implying it will be forwarded to the Ukrainian army. They then call the victim and extort money by threatening to report them to Russian authorities. Others claim that Ukrainian scammers were trained to say they are from Rostov if someone notices their accent, since the dialect there supposedly sounds similar.

Last year, reports claimed that Kremlin-friendly singer Larisa Dolina was also scammed – badly. Allegedly, the fraudsters convinced her to sell her apartment – according to explanations on social media and Dolina herself, a network of Ukrainian scammers was behind it, although Meduza reported that police did not confirm this.

In February this year, three months before Hungary’s Ukrainian scammers campaign, Vladimir Putin himself talked about Ukrainian scammers. Putin promised that the FSB, together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, would develop further measures to block phone calls coming from Ukraine and other so-called “unfriendly” countries, and that service providers would ensure that calls from official government lines would be clearly marked.

In this context, it is not surprising that Orbán’s statement was well received in the Russian media. Russian state or state-affiliated outlets, including Gazeta and the national TV channel TV1, also reported on Orbán’s remarks.

Written by Zalán Zubor, translated by Vanda Mayer. The Hungarian version of this story is here. Cover image: montage by Átlátszó