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In April 2025, Russian-language media and Telegram channels reported the death of the actress, who allegedly portrayed her compatriots in reports by various Ukrainian journalists. We have verified the accuracy of such publications.
Reports that Elena Savelyeva died in the combat zone in the Donetsk region spread on April 22. If you believe media publications and Telegram channels, the girl played dozens of characters for “Ukrainian propaganda.” Three of her roles are named as examples: a soldier with the call sign Witch, an Odessa woman struggling with the use of the Russian language, and a refugee from Toretsk - and also screenshots from the corresponding reports of Ukrainian television channels, where Savelyeva is presented under different names. The resources that disseminated this information emphasize that the girl’s story demonstrates how Ukrainian media falsify their publications.
They wrote about Savelyeva’s death “Russian newspaper", "Moskovsky Komsomolets", Lenta.ru, News.ru, Life.ru, "Arguments and facts" And "Constantinople» (twice), as well as Telegram channels "Bad News 18+"(221,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Colonelcassad (190,000), "Uncle Slava" (176,000), "Observer" (169,000), "Ukraine.ru"(124,000), "Special Operation Z"(125,000), etc.
The authors of viral publications are stingy with the details of Savelyeva’s biography. It is known that the girl was a serviceman of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and died in April 2025 near Pokrovsk (some resources indicate the old name of the city - Krasnoarmeysk). At the same time, “Verified” did not find any reports of the death of a serviceman named Elena Savelyeva in any databases dead Ukrainian military personnel, information about whom volunteers collect, nor in the Ukrainian media.
Posthumous portrait of the deceased
As evidence of Savelyeva’s death, a black and white photograph of a girl in a blue frame with a black ribbon in the right corner against the backdrop of a landscape in the colors of the Ukrainian flag is given. The same design of memorial photographs is used newspaper "Kirovogradskaya Pravda", which from time to time publishes obituaries of military personnel born in the Kirovograd region. The only difference is that the newspaper usually displays its logo on the left side. In addition, it is not clear why the editors posted an obituary about Savelyeva - the viral posts do not report any connection between the girl and the Kirovograd region.
It was not possible to find this photo on the Kirovogradskaya Pravda website or notes about the death of Savelyeva. “Verified” analyzed a black and white portrait of a girl without the publication’s branded frame through a service to identify AI content DeepFake–o–meter. Many of the tools he used showed that there was a high probability that this photo was generated by artificial intelligence.
In addition, “Verified” not for the first time encountered with such a fake. At the end of February, pro-Kremlin publications and Telegram channels reported the death of a man who, almost three years earlier, emotionally thanked British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for helping Ukraine during a chance meeting in Kyiv. Then, an image created by a neural network, designed in the style of photo obituaries of Kirovogradskaya Pravda, was also used as evidence.
Military personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces
One of Savelyeva’s roles, according to viral posts, was a Ukrainian soldier named Maryana with the call sign Witch. Judging by the logo in the upper left part of the screen, a story about her was published on the ICTV channel.
Find a story about this girl on website And YouTube channel ICTV failed, and other Ukrainian media also did not write about a serviceman with the same name and call sign. A reverse Google photo search yielded an almost identical photo. published in November 2023 on the website of the Ukrainian magazine DTF Magazine. Everything in the two images matches (pose, stripes, hand position, microphone, surroundings, etc.) except the soldier’s face. Apparently, it was replaced through a photo editor.
The original image published by DTF Magazine is a screenshot from plot Kharkov media “Nakipelo”. In July 2023, its journalists published a report on YouTube about women in the Ukrainian army. The serviceman from the screenshot is called Svetlana, she is a communications operator from the Kharkov region. In the video, she talks about her service in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, about her motivation and about life before the start of a full-scale war.
Native Odessa resident and refugee from Toretsk
In the case of Savelyeva’s next two roles—Ksenia from Odessa and Olesya from Torsk—a reverse search of Google screenshots shows only publications from Russian-language resources about the girl’s death.
“Verified” was able to discover a report, a screenshot of which became the basis for the picture with Ksenia from Odessa. It's due in April 2022 published on YouTube the local publication “Dumskaya”. In the story, journalists interview Odessa residents about whether the city needs to get rid of Russian toponyms and imperial monuments. As in the case of soldier Maryana, the face of the heroine of this video has been changed.
Although we could not find the original source of the image with the Torah woman Olesya, it, apparently, was forged in the same way as the previous two. It is very likely that AI was used to edit the original screenshots, but since only fragments of the images were changed, some detectors (for example, the same DeepFake-o-meter) produce contradictory results. Verified turned to Hive, another service to identify AI-generated content. The analysis showed a high probability that both images were processed by a neural network. The result for the screenshot with Odessa resident Ksenia is 99.9%. In the case of Olesya from Toretsk, Hive estimated the probability of using AI at 76%, but if you cut off the TV channel logo and the ticker at the bottom of the screen, it grows to 96.5%.
Other roles of Savelyeva
Some Telegram channels also attributed Savelyeva plays the role of a mortally wounded soldier who is trying to be revived by another soldier. "Verified" sorted it out this fake earlier - in fact, the videos that went viral in early March show the filming of a music video. Maryana Chechelyuk took part in them, who, before the start of the full-scale invasion worked investigator in Mariupol, during the battles for the city she took refuge on the territory of the Azovstal plant, and after an unsuccessful attempt to pass the filtering arranged by the Russian military, she spent two years in captivity. In May 2024, the girl was released as part of the exchange, and she returned to Ukraine.
The story of the allegedly dead actress spread and on the social network X, whose users recognized Savelyeva as a Ukrainian soldier who participated in the operation in the Kursk region. In the attached photo, the girl is captured in the city of Sudzha against the backdrop of the Pyaterochka supermarket, next to which many Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers were photographed and which, in connection with this, attracted special attention from pro-Kremlin media. Some bloggers even write about certain curse of "Pyaterochka" — supposedly all the soldiers who filmed near the store subsequently died. The same legend spread to the non-existent serviceman Elena Savelyeva.
Photo of a girl in front of a store appeared back in August 2024, shortly after the start of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ operation in the Kursk region. Although the girl’s identity could not be established, she is definitely not related to the portrait, which, we repeat, was highly likely generated by AI.
Savelyeva’s story, although it ended up in English-speaking segment X, spread mainly in Russian-language pro-Kremlin media and Telegram channels. First post on this topic appeared On April 22 at 13:04 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Shaman Rahu”, after which it spread to other resources. It is noteworthy that in the original source there was a mistake in the surname (“Savelveva”) and that it is in this form that it appears in some publications. Telegram channel “Shaman Rahu” is not the first time mentioned in analyzes “Verified” as a distributor and primary source of fakes about Ukraine.
Pro-Kremlin media and bloggers regularly accuse Ukrainian and international media of falsifying reports about the war. It started at least with blow to the maternity hospital in Mariupol in March 2022, in April of the same year the production was called (and is still called) video of civilians killed in Bucha. Most recently "Verified" sorted it out publications that the same actress took part in Deutsche Welle reports about the occupation of the Kyiv region in the spring of 2022 and about the attack on Sumy in April 2025 - in fact, these are two different women.
Thus, the story of the Ukrainian actress Elena Savelyeva, who allegedly starred in Ukrainian propaganda videos about the war, is fictitious. Some of the girl’s photos were generated using AI and subsequently edited to make them more believable. The originals of some photographs even depict other Ukrainian military personnel.
Cover photo: social networks
Updated May 2, 2025. In the section on the role of the native Odessa citizen, information about the original source has been added. You can view the previous version of the analysis Here.
- "Ukrinform". The Russian Federation has expanded the fake news that Ukraine is hiring actors for TV stories about Russian aggression
- Is it true that in Deutsche Welle reports the same Ukrainian woman played a woman raped by a soldier and a nanny in Sumy?
- Is it true that the girl who was the first to sign a contract with the Ukrainian Armed Forces under the program for recruiting young Ukrainians died at the front?
- Is it true that these videos depict the filming of staged videos about the war in Ukraine?
- Is it true that in Ukraine a woman is forced to remove the phrase “illegally conscripted” from her son’s tombstone?
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