At the end of November 2023, Russian media and Telegram channels circulated a fragment of Ukrainian television, which allegedly revealed data on losses in the war with Russia. We checked whether "1+1" actually conveyed such information.
According to the news, during the telethon, a ticker appeared on the air of the Ukrainian channel “1 + 1”, in which it was reported that during the full-scale war in Ukraine, 1,126,652 military personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were killed or missing. Later, the channel’s management, after a call from the President’s Office, allegedly apologized for the typo. In the 16-second video accompanying many of the publications, an off-screen viewer can be heard calling his wife in Ukrainian to share the news from “1 + 1” with her.
On November 26, such Russian media as “RIA Novosti", "Komsomolskaya Pravda", Regnum, "News", RT And "Moscow 24", as well as former Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov. The video became widespread on Telegram, in particular in the channels Readovka (901,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), “Live broadcast"(591,000), "KB +18» (287,000), Colonelcassad (244,000), "The world of Mikhail Onufrienko"(221,000), Ne.Sugar (216,000), "Older than the Edda"(216,000), "Solovyov"(203,000), Evil proof (160,000) and "Ostashko! Important"(122,000).
Due to the lack of official information in the public sphere about military losses in Ukraine after the start of a full-scale invasion of Russian troops, this topic is constantly becoming a subject speculation. In December 2022, Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Mikhail Podolyak appreciated the losses of the Ukrainian side were 10,000 - 13,000 people, without specifying whether we are talking only about the killed or also about the wounded. The New York Times in August 2023, citing Pentagon sources voiced a much more serious figure - about 70,000 killed.
Since February 24, 2022, the day the full-scale Russian invasion began, the Ukrainian TV channel “1 + 1” has been broadcasting a nationwide information marathon around the clock “One thing new”, which is hosted in turn by representatives of the largest local media. Allegedly, it was one of these broadcasts that ended up in a viral video. The text placed in the running line is “Ministry of Defense: during the hour of a full-scale war, 1,126,652 military servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces died and went missing.” Although the message contains a link to the Ukrainian military department, there are no statements about the total number of its own military losses didn't do it neither on the day the news spread, nor in general in recent months. And no other major Ukrainian resource relayed such significant information on November 26.
Another important detail: there is only one private video recording of the scandalous ticker tape. It is extremely unlikely that there will be a situation in which one of the most popular TV channels in the country allegedly disseminated sensational information, but no one else recorded it on camera or at least remembered the fact itself. The entire news about the blunder allegedly made by the editors of “1 + 1” is based on a single video and is not confirmed by the testimony of other television viewers.
Nevertheless, the TV channel itself considered it necessary to respond to the video. November 27 information resources of the holding “1 + 1 Media” distributed Statement from its management:
In the edited video with a fragment of the broadcast of the United News telethon on the 1 + 1 Marathon TV channel, a moving line appeared with a message supposedly from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine about the number of losses among Ukrainian military personnel.
This video is an outright fake. Russian media are actively disseminating information, trying to disorient society.
Please note that on the air of the TV channel “1 + 1 Marathon” there is no moving line with news, and in the false message itself there were mistakes: instead of the word “disappeared” it was written “disappeared”. In addition, there is no story with such design and such information on the official pages of “1 + 1 Media”. We urge Ukrainians to maintain information hygiene and not spread this fake news, so as not to help the enemy spread disinformation. Use official sources of “1 + 1 Media” and carefully check the information you find on the Internet.
Indeed, in modern Ukrainian the correct translation of the word “disappeared” in the phrase “missing” is “have emerged" The expression “disappeared” where less popular. And the phrase “come here”, used by the TV viewer who remained behind the scenes, is more typical for vernacular V Russian language, than for Ukrainian, whose speakers use the imperative "come here"
On the official YouTube channel of the “Television News Service” (TSN, broadcast on “1 + 1”), “Verified” found a recording of the broadcast of the “United News” marathon, which served as the basis for the viral video. On November 23, three days before the video began distributing, the presenter Inna Moskvina I talked live with a Ukrainian Armed Forces fighter named Alexander. Fragment conversations corresponding to the ticker footage can be seen between timestamps 6:06:42 and 6:06:57. It is easy to notice that at this moment completely different information is reported, and the background under the ticker is a different color. Moreover, it was not “1 + 1” that was responsible for this fragment of the broadcast - the “United News” marathon, regardless of who exactly prepares a particular fragment, is broadcast by all media participating in it, but Moskvina works on the “UA:Pershy” channel, part of the public television and radio company “Suspilne”.
The viral video began to spread on the morning of November 26. At 10:20 Moscow time it was published in the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel “Sheikh Tamir"(124,000 views), the news was picked up in a matter of minutes other channels the same political orientation. Let us note that “Sheikh Tamir” has repeatedly appeared in “Verified” analyzes as a source of dissemination of fakes, one of which also concerned a fake video allegedly from the “1 + 1” channel. The above facts indicate that in this case we are dealing with a fabricated video.
Cover photo: screenshot from social networks
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