On March 27, a video appeared on Z-channels, in which an alleged soldier in the uniform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine stops a car with a woman and a child. The military man forces her to speak Ukrainian with him, and then insults her, calling her a pig for speaking Russian.
The video was published on Twitter by a certain user “Yuri Alekseich ZV”, and very quickly the video began to be replicated by other channels with a Z-theme. A little later, he appeared on the official Twitter account of the Russian Foreign Ministry with the caption:
“Ukrainians live in such terror: see how the Ukrainian military scolds and shoots a mother with a child in the back seat, calling her a “pig” and a “bastard” simply because … they speak Russian. They say no Nazis…”
It soon became clear that the video was filmed on the territory of Ukraine, controlled by Russian troops, 30 km behind the front line. The GeoConfirmed project managed to geolocate the area, which, based on the direction of the power line, the forking of roads and the location of trees, as well as a number of objects that fall into the frame, determined that the action takes place in Makeevka, Donetsk region, exact coordinates: 47.977044, 37.953754.
Thus, either the Ukrainian DRGs are operating with might and main on the territory completely controlled by the Russian army, and, fearing nothing at all, arrange shooting, or this is a staging. The staging is also indicated by the behavior of the military, as well as the fact that video recorders have been banned in Ukraine for a year now – at any checkpoint the girl would be stopped, and the registrar would be confiscated.
“Look how the first one holds his weapon. Like he knows he's safe. He fires his weapon in front of the car to scare the woman and the child – for what? And they both can't see the camera? – GeoConfirmed analysts write.
The conclusions of the GeoConfirmed project were confirmed by the Moscow Calling Telegram channel, whose subscriber went to the area and was able to photograph the surroundings. The photo shows a clear match of the shape of the tree branches, which were also visible on the fake video.
Shortly after several OSINT projects at once proved that the video was fake, it mysteriously and without explanation disappeared from the account of the Russian Foreign Ministry, but it is available on the official Twitter page of the Russian embassy in the UK. Russian propagandists, like the former people's deputy and "speaker of Novorossiya" Oleg Tsarev, began to publish excuses. Tsarev wrote that he "immediately felt that the video was suspicious, but writing that it is suspicious is working for the enemy." Soon, other Z-publics also wrote that the video was fake. For example, the large channel Veteran's Notes stated that "ours are exercising, but we still have to study and study in conducting such information operations."