On 21 January 2024, a Ukrainian army veteran named Anatoly Fateev threatened to shoot at journalist Dmytro Domashchuk, in reaction to a misleading Facebook post published by Victoria Shynkarenko, the head of Army Help Rivne, a non-profit organization active in the city of Rivne in western Ukraine. Shynkarenko is also the head of Veteran House, a facility helping army veterans and run by public authorities in Rivne.
On the previous day, Shynkarenko published a lengthy Facebook post, in which she attempted to discredit the work of Domashchuk and of Chetverta Vlada, the media outlet the journalist works for, after the outlet began an investigation into the use of funds collected by the group for charity purposes.
In the discrediting Facebook post, Shynkarenko posted screenshots showing Facebook photos added by Domashchuk: these included Soviet symbolics and mentions of Russian president Vladimir Putin. In fact, the photos in question came from a Facebook post from March 2022, in which Domashchuk demanded that Ukraine take measures to prevent exports by a Japanese company to Russia, which he claimed could be used for the army: the photos with Soviet symbolics and mentions of Putin came from the company’s social media posts, in which it visibly tried to show its support of Russian policies and imperial culture.
In his direct message to Domashchuk, Fateev accused the journalist of holding pro-Russian views and threatened to “shoot through his knees”. He supported his accusations by sending Domashchuk a link to the publication by Shynkarenko. Chetverta Vlada editor Volodymyr Torbich said that the war veteran later apologized after the context was explained to him, and after Torbich publicly announced that Chetverta Vlada would not file a complaint with police if Fateev apologized.