At the end of October 2024, an animated video went viral on social media, comparing the repulse of the Mongol invasion to the fight against the North Korean military. We checked whether this video was actually distributed by the Ukrainian military department.
At the beginning of the short animated video, the Cossacks repel the attack of foreigners - judging by their appearance, the troops of the Golden Horde. Then the action moves to modern times, and the same fate befalls units under the DPRK flag, which are confronted by people in camouflage against the backdrop of Kyiv sights. “We could do it then, we can do it now,” says the voice-over and invites you to join the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Indicating that this is a propaganda video for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the video was published by Telegram channels “BTG "Kashtan" Special Forces "Akhmat""(177,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Voblya (145,000), "Apti Alaudinov" (103,000), "Mislivets Egor"(88,000), "Cat Kostyan"(83,000), etc.
October 24, 2024 State Duma of the Russian Federation ratified an agreement on the country’s strategic partnership with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, signed back in June by the heads of the two states, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. The document assumes that if one of the parties finds itself in a state of war due to an armed attack by one or more states, the second will immediately provide it with military assistance.
The fact that the DPRK is sending several thousand of its military to support Russia in the war against Ukraine, back on October 17 stated Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. About a week later, this information was confirmed by authoritative world Media, US Secretary of Defense NATO Secretary General and (indirectly) Putin. And on November 4th they appeared news about the first military clash between the newly arrived North Korean military and the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
However, “Verified” found no traces of the spread of the viral video on the official resources of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (website, accounts in X , Facebook , Instagram, on YouTube), neither in authoritative Ukrainian media, nor in the Ukrainian-language segment of social networks. Almost all of the resources that published the video were Russian or pro-Russian media, bloggers or ordinary Internet users.
The content of the video also raises questions. For example, at the end of the recording, the voice-over says the word “zaraz” (“now”) with the emphasis on the second syllable, whereas in Ukrainian it pronounced with emphasis on the first.
The characteristic graphic style, in particular the figures of Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers, may seem familiar to regular readers of Verified. In February 2024 we sorted it out another, very similar propaganda video, allegedly released in Ukraine. That video, in which residents of the country were called upon to send roosters to the front, turned out to be fake.
As fact-checkers from the Gvara Media project found out, in both cases the artists had a source of inspiration: stock images of Ukrainian soldiers, which can be downloaded from iStock for €9 (or completely free during the trial period). Ukrainian media use They are used in their publications as illustrative material, but they do not make entire animated videos based on these images.
The number 0-800-301-314 indicated in the video does not belong to the general hotline of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This telephone Department of the Ground Forces Recruiting Center for those wishing to take courses for UAV operators.
The earliest publication of a viral video, according to the TGStat service, took place on October 25 at 17:28 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Cat Kostyan" He repeatedly featured in analyzes “Verified” as the primary source of misinformation. Thus, there is a lot of direct and indirect evidence that the viral video about the Tatar-Mongols and North Koreans is fake and was never released by Ukrainian departments.
Cover photo: social networks
Read on topic:
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