How has a viral video of soldiers rescuing an injured comrade fueled accusations that the war in Ukraine is staged? Let’s take a closer look at it.
A viral video showing men in combat gear pulling an injured person to safety has been shared in multiple languages, from Russian to English to French, on various social media platforms.
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Because a woman with a camera in her hand appears in the background, some users are suggesting that the video is proof that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are staging war footage.
The video is watermarked by a pro-military Russian Telegram channel. We found that the video was first posted to this account in late July.
Doing a reverse image search, we found the same video posted on TikTok by an account claiming to provide training for Ukrainian civilians.
The caption of the video reads like this: “It is better to test yourself and really evaluate your strengths during educational tasks…”
The main clue is in the hashtags in the video, which include a mention of Kremenchuk, a city in central Ukraine on the banks of the Dnipro River, and another DFTG12 hashtag.
We googled and found the Facebook page of this educational training center located in the city of Kremenchuk.
According to his description, the center provides basic military training to civilians. We have found the original video, posted on July 24 on his Facebook page.
The director of the training center explained in an interview with AFP that the video shows participants in the training program learning how to remove a wounded person from a combat zone and that it was recorded for promotional purposes.
In June, Russia attacked a group of buildings with missiles in Kremenchuk, in central Ukraine, exactly one year after a deadly attack on a shopping center in the same city.
At least 22 people were killed in the Amstor shopping center during a Russian missile attack on June 27, 2022.
The false claim that the Russian attacks in Ukraine are staged is a common propaganda narrative in favor of the Kremlin
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