After the claims of Ukraine’s military and political command about increasing collaboration between Russia and North Korea and the confirmation of Russia involving soldiers from North Korea in its army, the video from supposedly Ukraine’s Defence Ministry, which is used by “Ukrainian authorities for motivating men to join the AFU and fight off the troops from North Korea” was shared online.
Our fact-checkers have looked into this news.
What happened?
On October 27, Telegram channels, in particular Medved (Медведь, archive), Zaporizhzhia front (Запорожский фронт, archive), “I am actually in Donetsk” (На самом деле в Донецке, archive), that systematically spread Russian propaganda shared animated video, told to be created by the Defence Ministry of Ukraine.
In the animation, the authors draw a parallel between historical events and modern times. In the video, the flag of North Korea is present, and “modern events” are happening in Kyiv.
“On the internet: Ukrainians defeated Mongol-Tatars!”
“We’ve managed back then! We’ll manage now!” With these words, an agit video from Ukraine’s Defence Ministry. Like that, Ukrainian authorities are trying to motivate recruits to go to the military and fight off North Korean troops.”
This “propagandist video from MoD” was spread by the users of X (1, 2) and through Russian social networks Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte (1, 2, 3, 4).
Analysis
First of all, we’ve checked the digital platforms of Ukraine’s Defence Ministry. The military command has an official website and social media pages Х, Facebook, Instagram, and a YouTube platform.
By analyzing information on the website and on the Defence Ministry’s social media from October 13 (meaning, since Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that North Korean soldiers would be fighting alongside Russian troops), we haven’t found a propaganda video like that.
For the next step, we’ve analyzed the video itself and figured out that the characters in the video are stock pictures (1, 2) that can be downloaded by anyone to then use to create animation.
In particular, illustrations with soldiers are widely used in media, for instance, to congratulate Ukrainian soldiers or in media materials about soldiers.
Moreover, such graphics for animation have already been used by the authors of pro-Russian channels. For instance, in one of such videos that have been spread in the Russian spaces online on January 2024, Ukrainian farmers seemed to have been offered to “send their roosters on the frontline” to create “combat roosters.”
The animation was voiced by a female voice and recorded through Google Translator. At the beginning of the video, creators used the emblems of the Defence Ministry, but on their websites and in social media such a video wasn’t published.
In the end, we checked the phone number written near the emblem of the Ministry of Defence at the end of the propaganda video and found out that it’s not the number of the Ministry of Defence’s hotline.
The hotline of Ukraine’s MoD that’s available for all is 0-800-500-442 or (since January 1) 1512.
People use the number from the video to join Drone Force, a recruitment project for the AFU’s Land Forces that’s focused on the selection and preparation of drone systems specialists.
Conclusion: Fake
Author: Olha Yakovleva
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