Fake documents are circulating on social networks and messaging apps falsely claiming that Russian police plan to abolish speed limits to help drivers escape drone attacks.
The forged orders, which were shared by accounts disguised as regional news resources, claim the Ministry of Internal Affairs will cancel speed limits from September 1.
The documents target the Belgorod, Voronezh, Rostov and Kursk regions in southern Russia. They also name the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics, as well as the Zaporizhzhia region, which are areas of eastern and southern Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed.
Police confirm documents are fake
The main directorates of the interior ministry for the Luhansk region and the annexed Crimean peninsula have already confirmed the documents are not authentic.
The claims have not been reported by mainstream news outlets, and no official regional government websites have published any information about changing speed limits. The orders are entirely missing from government sites in the Donetsk, Belgorod and Rostov regions.
A detailed review of the documents revealed gross legal errors, spelling mistakes and procedural flaws that expose them as forgeries. The analysis was conducted with the involvement of Lapsha Media, a Russian anti-fake resource.
Missing signatures and typos
An order claiming to be from the Luhansk interior ministry contains a date and a document number, but is missing an official signature.
A fake document for the Voronezh region is also missing a signature. In addition, the title of the signatory refers to the local police authority by the wrong official acronym, using UMVD instead of GU MVD.
The forged document aimed at the Crimean Republic contains a spelling mistake in the Russian word for directive.
Meanwhile, a fake order for the Kursk region contains a severe typo for an official state document, misspelling the Russian acronym for the Ministry of Internal Affairs as MDV instead of MVD. The document refers to itself as an order, but does not actually contain the word anywhere in the text. Furthermore, the second page of the Kursk order numbers two consecutive paragraphs as item five, an error considered unacceptable in documents of that level.
Procedural and legal flaws
The forged documents also fail to understand Russian legal procedures and police jurisdiction.
Clause 3.2 of the fake Kursk order instructs local commanders of the State Traffic Inspectorate to suspend the operation of all stationary and mobile speed cameras in their territory. However, the federal interior ministry has previously clarified, specifically regarding the Kursk region, that the police and its territorial bodies do not own or maintain the automatic photo and video recording networks.
The documents for both the Kursk and Zaporizhzhia regions also incorrectly cite Article 2.7 of the Russian Administrative Code, which covers actions taken in a state of extreme necessity.
The fake Kursk order uses the article to grant the regional police chief the power to suspend traffic rules in advance for an undefined group of drivers, which the law does not allow. In the Zaporizhzhia document, the reference is also invalid because implementing the extreme necessity clause requires additional directives from government authorities.
