A July 9 entry in Paul Goble’s “Window on Eurasia” blog calls attention to a recent article in the Ukrainian press, “The Jewish card in Russian operations against Ukraine,” which exposes what the article’s author says was a Russian disinformation ploy against Ukraine’s president Viktor Yushchenko.

In 2008, Russia’s Regnum news service announced the publication of a book about Viktor Yushchenko’s father called Andrei Yushchenko: The Person and the “Legend” by Yuri Vilner. The book claims that Yushchenko’s father collaborated with the Nazis as a camp policeman and informer while a prisoner of war during World War II.

Ukrainian poet Moses Fishbein, who wrote the “Jewish card” article, read the book on the Internet and called the person to whom it was dedicated, Aron Shneer of Israel, to ask about the author, Yuri Vilner, identified as an Israeli historian.

Shneer had never heard of Vilner and Fishbein eventually concluded that “no one either in Israel or in Russia—or anywhere else for that matter—neither scholars nor journalists” knew of Vilner.

Fishbein then checked the book’s ISBN (International Standard Book Number), which provides a unique identification for books published internationally. It was 969-228-292-5.

The first group of numbers in a 10-digit ISBN denotes the country in which the book was published. The numbers 969 are for books published in Pakistan, not Israel. The number for Israel is 965.

In addition, ISBNs for books published in 2007 or later have 13 digits, not 10, another indication the Yushchenko book is a fake.

Fishbein says the fraudulent book was exposed in the Ukrainian press in 2008 and on an Israeli Web site, but that “Russian secret services” continue to use disinformation in “special operations” against Ukraine.

(Paul Goble, who spotted the Fishbein article, is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious issues in Russia and the former Soviet Union.)