In September 2024, a Ukrainian-language video went viral on social networks, telling about the visit of TCC employees to a funeral event. We have verified the authenticity of this video.
As reported in the video, recently in Nikolaev, workers of the local territorial recruitment center (TCK, the Ukrainian analogue of military registration and enlistment offices) took ten people from the wake of Dmitry Khairulenko, who was mobilized in mid-June and soon died in the Kursk region. In the midst of a wake taking place in a cafe, people in uniform allegedly burst into the establishment and took away ten men, whom their relatives had not been able to contact for more than a week.
The story gained the most popularity on Telegram, in particular thanks to the channels “Ne.Sugar"(274,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Rus_criminal (136,000), "Actually in Kherson"(105,000), "What happened?"(91,000), "Communications center" (85,000) and "On the front line"(77,000). It was also actively distributed in Instagram and in "VKontakte" The newspaper also wrote about the incident.Arguments and facts"
A viral video resembles the plot of a TV channel or other media outlet that produces video content: at the beginning of the video, a logo with the inscription Ukraine appears, and the video is accompanied by subtitles, which are duplicated by a voice-over. However, “Verified” using the reverse image search services in Google and Yandex, as well as the tool TinEye, could not find any other examples of using the logo from the splash screen. Neither city nor national Ukrainian publications wrote about the alleged incident in Nikolaev.
The frame, which supposedly depicts the deceased Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier Dmitry Khairulenko, was taken from a publication about another Ukrainian soldier, a native of the Volyn region, Nikolai Voitovich. This photo was published in February 2024 on Facebook - then in the profile of the Shatsk rural community posted obituary of his fellow countryman. Voitovich died February 2 in the Donetsk region.
Footage allegedly depicting TCC employees in a Nikolaev cafe appeared on the Internet back in June 2023. In the video of the Ukrainian YouTube channel “Know your rights” the speech was walking about an incident in the Cherkasy region, where they tried to issue a summons to a person working in a catering establishment. The funeral was not mentioned in this video.
The remaining fragments of the video, judging by the lack of information in the Ukrainian media and social networks about the recently deceased Ukrainian Armed Forces serviceman Dmitry Khairulenko, were also taken from open sources and used for illustration.
The first to post this video, according to the TGStat service, on September 19 at 13:33 Moscow time was the channel “Cat Kostyan"(78,000 views). He has repeatedly appeared in “Verified” analyzes as a source of disinformation about Ukraine, including on topic mobilization.
Thus, the story disseminated in pro-Kremlin Telegram channels is yet another fake video, assembled from various unrelated videos and prepared with the aim of discrediting the Ukrainian army.
Cover photo: screenshot from viral video
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