At the end of October 2024, the Russian-language segment of social networks bypassed a fragment of a television report in German. Internet users claimed that it showed the gameplay of the popular shooter instead of real footage. We have verified the veracity of these messages.
In the video, which lasts about a minute, the German-speaking presenter talks about the situation at the front in Ukraine. In the background there are footage from the front line, which, according to commentators, can be seen as computer graphics. As stated in the caption to the video, the fake report from the trenches in the Pokrovsky direction was provided to German journalists by the Ukrainian military. Bloggers also name the original source of the footage - the popular series of computer games Call of Duty.
Among the major Telegram channels this video was published “KB"(228,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Voblya (134,000), "Three heroes and Zelensky drug addict"(75,000), "The goat screamed" (67,000) and "Voice of Mordor"(55,000). The video was also distributed in other languages - in particular, English, Arabic And Uzbek.
Welt (formerly N24) - German socio-political TV channel, broadcasting since 2000. In viral publications it was mistakenly called Die Welt - this is the name of one of the largest newspapers in Germany, belonging to to the same owners and using the same logo. The design of the plaque corresponds to the current design of the TV channel.
Military expert featured in the frame Guido Schmidtke in fact periodically introduces TV channel viewers with the situation at the front in Ukraine. In the issue of the column with his participation dated August 21, 2024, similar footage can be seen on the screen behind the expert - although Schmidtke’s speech at this moment is somewhat different. Perhaps the video recording was used more than once by the expert in his speeches.
At first glance, due to the specific graphics, the frames really resemble an episode from a modern shooter. Through reverse image search the same personnel can be found in a video on the official channel of the Ukrainian Azov Brigade, which was published on July 15, 2024 under the title “Azov storms and clears enemy positions.” Destruction of the occupiers from the first person." Three days later, a fragment of this video shared on its page on the social network X Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The episode shown on Welt is cut from the bottom - exactly to the logo of the Azov brigade.
At the same time, the original Azov video, due to its higher image quality, looks much less like footage from a computer game. It can be seen that this is a real shot with some peculiarities in the camera settings or filters. Perhaps this was done specifically to achieve the effect of a first-person shooter.
The description of the video says that the shooting took place in the Serebryansky forest in the Lugansk region. There are others on the Internet personnel from this forest area, where active fighting are coming from 2022 and which, due to constant shelling, has acquired a post-apocalyptic appearance. Some photographs of Serebryansky forest from Google Maps also similar to footage from the Azov video.
Where did the Call of Duty hypothesis come from? In the upper left corner of the viral video, the inscription @MehrWertWissen is visible. YouTube channel with the same username exists since 2022, he has over 18,000 subscribers. The name MehrWertWissen is translated from German as “more valuable knowledge,” and the channel’s description appears to indicate its purpose: “Making the obvious visible.” It also clarifies: “All this is satire.” However, in addition to frankly satirical videos, unedited ones are also published on the channel fragments from real TV shows that bloggers think look funny.
The video, which later went viral, was published in the MehrWertWissen Telegram channel on August 21, 2024, on the same day as the video from Welt, footage from which is discussed above. The publication of the satirical channel was accompanied by the caption: “The offensive of Ukrainian troops or the video animation of Call of Duty? Source: YouTube WeltTV, 08/21/2024, deleted."
Two months have passed, and a question about Call of Duty posed by a German-speaking blogger has turned into a statement. October 26th distributed English-speaking users of the social network X, and two days later the video began repost and in Russia. Thus, having passed through the satirical resource, the original video from the report began to be widely perceived as footage from a video game.
Thus, there is no evidence to suggest that the video used by the Welt channel was taken from the popular shooter. The source of the video is a recording published on the Azov YouTube channel, and other footage from Serebryansky Forest confirms this geolocation.
Cover photo: MehrWertWissen
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