Propagandist Kosti Heiskanen illegally visits Avdiivka again

Kremlin propagandist Kosti Heiskanen, usually presented in the media as a Finnish journalist, "announced" he had completed filming another pseudo-documentary, reports the pro-Russian Telegram channel "Donbass Reshaet".

He started shooting his propaganda films titled "10 Years of Terror in the Donbas" and "Ukraine-Created Hell in Avdiivka" in the early spring of 2024.

Screenshot from the Telegram channel "Donbas Reshaet"

Heiskanen calls himself a foreign reporter fighting "the darkness" and "able to stop the terror in the Donbas." This is his third time visiting Ukraine's occupied territories.

"These films and all the work of foreign journalists will help break through the lies and we will be able to stop the terror in the Donbas. So that the world that people have been waiting for for 10 years wins here," said the propagandist.

The Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation discovered dozens of people who are called foreign journalists in Russia, but are in fact full-time Moscow propagandists. Heiskanen is one of them. The CCD has written on Telegram that Heiskanen was born in Saint-Petersburg (then Leningrad) to a Finnish-Russian family. He worked in Finland's top mass media, but he did not cover politics, instead writing tourism reports. He is a frequent guest in pro-Kremlin media and TV programming. He has not written for Finnish media for a long time. In fact, the Finnish news often mention him as a "mouthpiece of Russian propaganda."

Kosti Heiskanen's likely real name was suggested by The Insider in June 2024: Konstantin Lebedev.

We would like to remind you that, in accordance with Ukraine's law, all checkpoints along the segment of the Ukraine–Russia border adjacent to the occupied territories are currently closed. They are closed in Crimea as well. The occupied territories can only be legally from the Ukraine-controlled side with an appropriate permit. The Russian figures arriving in the occupied territories for making propaganda or providing material support to the Russian army have no such permit.