Sasha Grey Is Not a Murdered Battle Nurse in the Ukraine

Former porn star Sasha Grey would just like to make sure we’re all clear on the fact that she’s not dead. Contrary to the reports of some dicey-looking Internet memes, she also wasn’t working as a nurse for the Russian Army, and has never—not even once—been captured by Ukrainian soldiers and then brutally murdered. She’s fine.

Mediaite reports that a picture of Grey has been speeding around Russian social media for weeks. In the post, which you can see screenshots of here, she’s identified as “Sasha Serova,” a Russian nurse who was captured by Ukrainian troops, raped and then chopped up with an axe.

The rumor of Grey’s untimely demise originated on a forum known as Dvach, which Mediaite describes as “Eastern Europe’s version of 4chan.” The idea was evidently to cook up the most awful story possible, to see if pro-Russian separatists bought it, even though with some rather direct clues that it was a hoax (“Serova”, as the Moscow Times noted, is similar to the Russian word for “gray.”)

Grey was understandably not happy to find her image being attached to such a dumb, disturbing prank, especially at a time when lots of real people are dying and being displaced in the conflict. In a series of exasperated tweets yesterday, she cleared things up:

Grey also pointed out that after she tweeted “Stay strong, Kiev!” in 2013, she was labeled anti-Russian:

Please stop inserting Sasha Grey into your weird propaganda and/or poorly-conceived pranks, everyone.

Sasha Grey appears with a blurred Elijah Wood on a talk show in Madrid, Spain, June 2014. Photo via AP