Russian propaganda spreads fake news about 'abuse' in Ukrainian army over drinking

Russian Telegram channels are circulating a video allegedly showing a Ukrainian serviceman being "abused" by his commanders. The footage depicts a man tied to a tree – supposedly as punishment for drinking alcohol.

This is fake. The video is staged, and the man's face was altered using deepfake technology. This has been confirmed by an analysis conducted with the AI-content verification tool DeepFack-o-meter.

The platform employs several bots trained on hundreds of thousands of fake video, audio, and photo materials, allowing them to detect manipulated content. The bots that analyze AI-generated audio, facial movements, and pixel distortions indicating edits concluded with a probability of 81.8-100% that the video is a deepfake.

Russian propagandists spread this fake to discredit the Ukrainian Armed Forces and undermine mobilization efforts in the country.

The practice of physically punishing soldiers, including tying them to trees, is, in fact, common in the Russian army, as evidenced by numerous videos posted by Russian servicemen on social media.

Russian propaganda had previously spread a fake claiming that Ukraine was "mobilizing" men with mental disorders.

Andriy Olenin