Is it true that after Trump’s election, Ukrainian soldiers became eight times more likely to surrender?

In November 2024, news spread on Telegram that the results of the US presidential elections had greatly reduced the morale of the Ukrainian army and Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers began to surrender more often. We checked how valid this claim is.

On November 11, a message went viral on Telegram channels that said: “Ukrainian military became eight times more likely to surrender after Trump’s victory. “In the period from November 6 to November 11, an eightfold increase in cases of surrender of Ukrainian Armed Forces military personnel was recorded compared to statistics before November 5.” Such posts appeared in the channels “Uncle Slava"(184,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Putin on Telegram"(179,000), "Dmitry Vasilets" (163,000), "Bullet"(89,000), "Ostashko! Important" (85,000) and "Kot Kostyan - official channel"(72,000). The news was spread on other social networks (for example, on the blog of showman Andrei Bocharov in X corresponding tweet dialed 24,000 views), as well as in the press - for example, it was published “Arguments and facts" And "Russian newspaper"

The US presidential elections took place on November 5, 2024. Donald Trump, who already held this post from 2017–2021, won. During the election campaign, the politician repeatedly said that the United States must get out of the war in Ukraine, and promised, in the event of his victory, to achieve an end to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as soon as possible with benefits for both parties. Since his election, Trump and his team have continued insist at the earliest possible start of negotiations, involving territorial concessions on the part of Kyiv. Trump's statements about the war in Ukraine have repeatedly become the reason for publications in Russian propaganda media and Telegram channels, and they used both real statements of the elected president and fakes (some of which sorted it out "Checked")

This time, as the source of information, the authors of most viral publications cite a statement allegedly made by the editor-in-chief of the Euronews TV channel, but there are no links to this statement in the posts. Multiple channels (for example, "Kot Kostyan - official channel") accompanied their recordings with a video with the logo of the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which quotes Klaus Strunz, Editorial Director of Euronews since October 2024. “Everything comes to a logical conclusion. The defeat of Ukraine is obvious to everyone, the soldiers are using their last chance to save their lives, and they have every right to do so,” the media manager allegedly said, calling the situation observed in the combat zone as expected.

The video is 44 seconds long. assembled from several photographs replacing each other to the music. The video does not use voiceover or direct speech, and the main statements (the same as in the publications of Telegram channels) are given in subtitles.

"Verified" examined verified ISW accounts in X, YouTube, Instagram And Facebook, as well as official website Institute. These resources do not contain the video that was distributed by Telegram channels, nor are there text messages that Ukrainian soldiers began to surrender more often after Trump’s election victory. In addition, the video is noticeably different from those that ISW usually publishes on its social networks - in them, subtitles are only an auxiliary function, and the experts speak to the camera.

A reverse photo search on Google showed that the video used images from open sources, and at least some of the images illustrating the surrender of the Ukrainian military in November 2024 were dated in the spring of 2022.

“Verified” also did not find in authoritative sources the quote attributed to Strunz in the viral video. In verified account There are also no such statements from the media manager in X. The video with Strunz used in the video was cut from his interview, published on the YouTube channel of the German publication Bild in January 2022, even before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Authors posts V some The Telegram channels did not refer to the video allegedly published by ISW, nor to the alleged statement by Strunz, but to fast Cheya Bose on the social network X. Bose is an Irish publicist, cooperating with Russian channel RT. His tweet does not say how he knows about the increasing number of cases of Ukrainian soldiers surrendering into captivity.

“Verified” has already been sorted out one of the fakes launched by Bose, but this time he was not the first to post the misleading content. The earliest publication on this topic that “Verified” was able to find appeared on November 11 at 12:52 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Military observer"(previously he had repeatedly featured V debriefings "Verified"), and two hours later Bose's tweet was posted. Video mimicking the ISW video, first published pro-Russian Telegram channel “Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation" on the same day at 14:19.

Thus, the assertion that after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, Ukrainian soldiers began to surrender eight times more often is not confirmed by authoritative sources. The words of one of the Euronews executives cited as evidence are attributed to him without any basis, and the ISW video is forged.

Cover photo: screenshot of a viral video

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on topic:

1. Is it true that at a prayer service in Ivano-Frankivsk, the priest called Trump the Antichrist and the devil?
2. Is it true that Azov fighters are burning Trump's books to protest his peace plan?
3. False authorities. How the BBC became the brand of choice for fake video creators