Two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, an account on the Telegram messaging platform posing as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged his armed forces to surrender. Since January 2022, the SC has received a total of 47 complaints and enquiries on illegal investment schemes promoted through Telegram. These fraudulent schemes offer non-existent investment opportunities, promising very attractive and risk-free returns within a short span of time. They commonly offer unrealistic returns of as high as 1,000% within 24 hours or even within a few hours. For Oleksandra Tsekhanovska, head of the Hybrid Warfare Analytical Group at the Kyiv-based Ukraine Crisis Media Center, the effects are both near- and far-reaching. On Feb. 27, however, he admitted from his Russian-language account that "Telegram channels are increasingly becoming a source of unverified information related to Ukrainian events." And indeed, volatility has been a hallmark of the market environment so far in 2022, with the S&P 500 still down more than 10% for the year-to-date after first sliding into a correction last month. The CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, has held at a lofty level of more than 30.
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