fact check
Stupid disinformation
Ukrainian soldiers threaten and shoot at woman and child? Kremlin propaganda makes a fool of itself with staged video
One of the soldiers fires several shots past the previously “controlled” vehicle
© Screenshot / Telegram
The Kremlin justifies its war of aggression with the narrative that Nazi Ukraine threatens the Russian people. Stupid only when “evidence” of the neighbor’s supposedly nationalistic attitude turns out to be bad staging. A fact check.
From the very beginning, Russia has tried to justify its war of aggression against Ukraine by saying that it must protect its own people and all people of Russian origin from the Kiev Nazi regime and the fascists in the West. Kremlin propaganda regularly fuels this narrative with alleged “evidence”.
The most recent example: A dashcam video of an alleged vehicle check by Ukrainian soldiers, during which the driver and her child, who is said to be in the car with her, are massively insulted and threatened when one of the military officers notices that the woman speaks Russian and is Muslim. Towards the end of the recording, which is a little over two minutes, the soldier fires several more shots in the direction of the vehicle.
We took a closer look at the video – a fact check with a clear result.
Russian Foreign Ministry deletes tweet about fake
Claim: Ukrainian soldiers stop a mother and child in the car, a soldier threatens the two and shoots in the direction of the vehicle.
Evaluation: Incorrect. The video is staged and filmed east of Donetsk in Russian-controlled territory.
The facts: The video of the alleged vehicle inspection was first distributed on Monday afternoon (March 27) on various pro-Russian Telegram channels, including accounts with several hundred thousand subscribers. As a result, official Kremlin mouthpieces also picked up the story. The Russian Foreign Ministry shared the recording on Twitter and wrote: “Once a Nazi, always a Nazi. This is the kind of terror in which Ukrainians live.” While the Foreign Office has since deleted the tweet without comment, the disinformation is still online on the Twitter profile of the Russian Embassy in the UK (archived here):
Why disinformation? After publication, several Internet users quickly found out that no Ukrainian soldiers could be seen here and that the video was instead staged to present Ukraine as a Nazi country.
Video captured in Russian-controlled territory
The strongest argument for the disinformation thesis: Although the journey recorded by the dashcam provides hardly any information about the surroundings, a few prominent points such as tree branches, power poles and a fork in the road were enough to Locate the shooting location east of Donetsk (Google Maps link). The receipt: On another dash cam shot starting in Donetsk, the exact arrangement of tree branches can be seen at one point, as can also be seen in the fake video.
The location of the video on Google Maps
© Montage: star / Martin Thiele
According to this, the video was taken about 30 kilometers behind the current front line in an area controlled by the Russian army. It is 100 percent impossible that a Ukrainian unit is patrolling here.
Further indications speak for a staging
- The alleged Ukrainian soldiers are marked with yellow bands on their helmets, arms and legs. In fact, the Ukrainian army is currently using green markings to identify its own troops.
- The second soldier keeps the barrel of his rifle pointed at the ground throughout the shot, in the meantime he even turns his back to the action. But a soldier would never react like that in a potentially dangerous situation.
- Both soldiers are masked, which doesn’t mean anything but ensures the two are unidentifiable.
- Also striking is the cross painted on the tailgate of the pickup truck, which users identified as a so-called “bar cross”. However, the symbol, which was also used by the German Wehrmacht during World War II, is not used in the Ukrainian army. Obviously, the Nazi narrative is being substantiated here.
- The Ukrainian Interior Ministry already banned motorists in March 2022, i.e. shortly after the start of the war. the use of a dashcam under threat of punishment. The reason: the recordings could endanger their own troops if they fell into the wrong hands. Since the ban applies to all regions of Ukraine, it is unlikely that the car would have been allowed to pass a checkpoint unhindered.
- Neither the woman nor the allegedly traveling child can be seen in the video. This fuels speculation that the sound track could have been added later. However, this cannot be verified using the uploaded files.
- The allegedly threatened woman’s car looks very clean for driving in a war zone.
The location of the recording, located east of Donetsk, and the many inconsistencies made even pro-Russian channels doubt the authenticity of the story. An account with around 300,000 subscribers, which also distributed the video along with the Nazi narrative, wrote later very meekly: “In the conduct of such information operations, we still have to learn and learn.”