During the Ukraine crisis in 2014, manipulative and often outright invented news poured in from Russia on satellite television and websites and into sympathetic local newspapers.

Recurring themes emerged, becoming the talk at water coolers around the capital: An Islamic State training camp had opened in Ukraine; President Petro O. Poroshenko was a drunk and sometimes appeared inebriated in public; nationalists had taken to lynching or, in one infamous case, crucifying Russian-speaking children.

Ukraine banned some Russian television broadcasts, a practice that raised free speech objections, and yet the fake news still circulates online. “StopFake News” has chosen public debunking, not banning, as the best defense — and has shown it can become its own form of appealing entertainment. ...

“StopFake News” is a peculiar kind of news. For three years, the headlines have declared what did not happen and what was not said, and the heroism or villainy of people who never existed.
In story after story — more than 1,000 have been reported so far — the journalists reveal laws that were never passed, insults that were never uttered and riots that never happened on quiet town squares. “The Exclusive Interview That Wasn’t,” reads one headline. ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/world/europe/ukraine-kiev-fake-news.html

They (Russia) were pretty successful in the beginning because there were no reactions from Ukraine. We didn’t take them seriously and we allowed them to have at least three TV networks that were still broadcasting in Ukraine.

The measures that were conducted helped us make them look stupid. Not a lot of Ukrainians right now — I believe 3 to 5 percent — still consider Russian media a reliable source of information. The other Ukrainians are sure that Russian media are propaganda outlets.