In December 2024, Telegram channels distributed a video in which the hosts of an American TV show laugh after a story about Ukrainians killed at the front. We have verified the authenticity of this video.
On December 9, a 40-second video showing a working TV began to be published on RuNet. It allegedly broadcasts a news broadcast on one of the American television channels: three presenters are laughing, and on the screen behind one of them, footage of graves with Ukrainian flags is shown. At the same time, a creeping line at the bottom of the screen reports that the Pentagon is concerned about massive losses in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Some resources that distributed this video accompany it with the caption: “American women laughing against the backdrop of a Ukrainian cemetery is a perfect illustration of the Biden era.”
The video appeared in Telegram channels "Uncle Slava"(185,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Voblya • news"(132,000), "Sheikh Tamir"(124,000), "Kot Kostyan - official channel" (91,000) and "Denazification UA"(38,000).
Since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the authorities of both countries have rarely disclosed data on the number of dead and wounded in their armies, while claiming superior enemy losses. They regularly give their assessments world leaders, foreign military And international organizations, and independent journalists and researchers are trying to calculate real losses based on open sources And circumstantial evidence.
Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for the last time reported about their own losses back in September 2022 - according to Sergei Shoigu, who then headed the department, 5,937 Russians died at the front. At the same time, in July 2024, Deputy Chief of the Main Military-Political Directorate of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Apti Alaudinov assessed Ukrainian Armed Forces losses amounted to 700,000 people.
December 8, President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky reportedthat since February 2022 the country has lost 43,000 troops killed and 370,000 wounded (half of them, according to the Ukrainian leader, were able to return to the front). According to his own estimate, Russian losses amounted to 198,000 dead and more than 550,000 wounded.
On the same day, US President-elect Donald Trump brought their data: 600,000 Russian military personnel were killed or wounded in the war, Ukraine’s losses were 400,000 military personnel and “much more” civilians. The viral video spread across Russian-language Telegram channels the day after the statements by Zelensky and Trump.
In the lower left corner of the viral video, the logo of the KMAX 31 television channel is visible. This is a television station in Sacramento, California, owned by and managed CBS. Next to the channel's logo is the name of the show Good Day, a daily morning program that has been broadcast since 1995. Usually the presenters discuss the latest news and events, and also talk about the traffic situation and weather. The show is primarily entertaining in nature: episodes are dedicated to social events, preparation for the holidays, cooking And fashion. The hosts generally do not discuss events like the war in Ukraine. On the 25th anniversary of the program's airing, KMAX CEO Justin Draper described as "a truly hyperlocal show, not just news, weather and traffic reports." It is at least strange that a report about large-scale losses in the ranks of the Ukrainian army, if you believe viral posts, was included in the Good Day issue, and not, for example, in the evening news.
Now at the show 12 permanent presenterswhich work on different days. The video being circulated features Ashley Williams and Tina Makua, and the weather forecast was delivered by meteorologist Darla Givens. The video circulated in Russian-language sources on December 9, and the day before the episode of Good Day was actually hosted by Williams, Makua and Givens. Despite this, the show on the channel YouTube And official website the Dec. 8 episode does not include the clip that went viral. Moreover, the presenters in that episode looked different from the ones in the video that went viral: both the clothes and the studio design were different.
“Verified” was found on the Good Day YouTube channel video clip, which became the basis for a viral video. It was published on December 21, 2019, that is, almost five years before the news about the presenters laughing at the losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces appeared. In the original, the screen behind Williams shows not footage from the Ukrainian cemetery, but the inscription “Holiday Travel.”
Judging by the full version of this video, the hosts laugh because Givens misspoke while reading out the weather forecast. She was talking about visibility, but accidentally said “disability”.
Most likely, when creating the fake video, a video editing program was used - footage from Ukrainian cemeteries was simply superimposed on the screen in the Good Day studio. To make the fake look more convincing, the video’s image saturation was additionally increased and it was filmed on the screen using a phone camera. This significantly spoils the quality of the picture and, accordingly, makes traces of editing less noticeable.
The creators of the fake not only superimposed a video with graves on the screen in the studio, but also edited the ticker: the original shows a weather forecast in California cities, which duplicates Givens’ words, and the viral video reports the Pentagon’s dissatisfaction with serious losses in the Ukrainian army. However, neither US military chief Lloyd Austin nor US President Joe Biden spoke publicly about such concerns in the days leading up to the video's distribution. Trump, yesterday met with Zelensky and, judging by his post in Truth Social, discussing war casualties, also made no such statements. In addition, in the ticker you can see the abbreviation AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine, that is, the Armed Forces of Ukraine), although major American media extremely rarely use it to refer to the Ukrainian army, which also indirectly indicates a fake.
The video was distributed almost exclusively in Russian-language sources. Neither reputable American nor Ukrainian media wrote that the presenters laughed after reporting about the losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. First time edited video with similar caption published pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Avia.pro December 9 at 11:27 Moscow time. This channel has been done many times before featured in analyzes “Verified” as a distributor of fakes and unreliable information.
Thus, the hosts of the American morning show Good Day did not laugh after the story about Ukrainian soldiers killed at the front. The video being circulated was doctored. It was based on a program released at the end of 2019; on the screen behind the presenter was the inscription “Holiday Travel”, and the meteorologist’s slip of the tongue caused laughter among those present in the studio.
Cover photo: social networks
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