BlackRock did not call on Ukraine to “stop burying dead soldiers on its soil”

The post shows a photo of a cemetery in Kharkiv, Ukraine, taken in January 2023 by a photographer from the Reuters news agency (archived link).

BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager based in New York, is advising the Ukrainian government on its Ukraine Development Fund (UDF), which aims to attract investment to support the reconstruction of the war-torn country. (archived link).

Ukraine, known as the “breadbasket of Europe”, is one of the largest grain producers in the world thanks to It is fertile “black” soil (archived link).

Pro-Kremlin propaganda suggests that Western countries have been providing financial support to Ukraine since Russia's invasion because they want to exploit its natural resources.

The false claim that BlackRock had asked Ukraine to stop holding funerals appeared online in August and spread quickly on Facebook, X and Telegram, and in languages ​​including Russian, English, Serbian and French, and was shared thousands of times.

“Completely wrong”

However, a BlackRock spokesman said the claim was unfounded.

“This is completely false,” the spokesman told AFP on August 22. “BlackRock Inc. does not own any land in Ukraine.”

A spokesman for the land committee of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB) told AFP the same day: “We have not heard of anything like this.”

Frederic Mousseau, policy director of the Oakland Institute in the US, which has published reports on agrarian reform in Ukraine, confirmed that BlackRock does not own any land in the country but does have other Ukrainian assets (archived link).

“Based on our investigations into large land leases in Ukraine, presented in our report 'War and Theft, the Takeover of Ukraine's Agricultural Land,' BlackRock does not own any land in Ukraine,” he told AFP on August 22 (archived link).

In Ukraine, the privatization of agricultural land began in 2021. Mousseau While this may provide indirect access to land assets, no single investor could access 47 percent of the country's total land area in this way.

Foreigners are not allowed to purchase agricultural land in Ukraine. They can only purchase non-agricultural land if they meet certain legal conditions. This is stipulated in the Land Code of Ukraine (archived link).

“BlackRock owns part of Ukraine’s debt through Eurobonds, which gives the company influence over the country,” Mousseau added.

“The creditors have forced Ukraine to undertake a drastic structural adjustment program aimed at privatizing all sectors of the economy.”

Satirical Telegram channel

An AFP investigation found that the misinformation originated on a satirical Telegram channel in 2023.

The false claim began circulating a few months after Ukraine announced plans to establish a Ukraine Development Fund (archived link) in May of that year.

By October, the misinformation had spread to various Russian-language websites, including here, here, here and here.

The Polish-language pro-Kremlin website Pravda-pl.com attributed the claim to the ANNA news agency, which has similar political ties, and to a Polish-language Telegram account called Russian State Chancellery.

In an ANNA News article dated October 5, 2023, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is quoted as saying: “We are witnessing a completely irrational use of the black soil by the Ukrainians themselves.”

However, BlackRock's name was not spelled in the standard format in the article, and a search for Telegram accounts with this misspelling revealed posts in Russian here and here, as well as in Belarusian here and here from 2023 (archived link).

A previous post shared on Telegram channel called “verysexydasha”, dated 20 September 2023warned: “Be careful, false and harsh satire is possible. What is written is fiction, all coincidences are coincidental.”

Meanwhile, posts in August 2024 spread the false claim that BlackRock representatives had “recently paid a visit” to Kyiv.

A company spokesperson confirmed on August 23 that the last official visit to Kyiv took place on May 5, 2023. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also met with representatives of BlackRock and JP Morgan at the summit in Davos, Switzerland in January 2024 (archived links here, here and here).

The International Monetary Fund announced on September 10 that it had reached an agreement with Ukraine to review an assistance program that could open the door to the country providing $1.1 billion (archived link).

Under the agreement, creditors – including BlackRock, Pimco and other large institutional investors – would write off billions of dollars from the nominal value of their holdings and agree to a new payment plan on terms more favorable to Kyiv.

AFP has confirmed further misinformation about the war in Ukraine here.