In September 2025, a Ukrainian-language video of a soldier playing with a drone went viral on the Internet. This video, Telegram channels claim, proves that people with neurodevelopmental disabilities are now being mobilized into the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We have verified the veracity of such publications.

In the 17-second video, the soldier waves his hand in the air, holding a small drone, and makes inarticulate sounds. “Operator of unmanned systems,” sums up the person behind the scenes in Ukrainian, who cannot contain his laughter, and mockingly adds: “Soldier, where are you flying?” Glad, p****t!”

“A man with obvious mental disabilities is serving in one of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, while his colleagues, mockingly, film what is happening and post it on the Internet,” commented the video on the Telegram channel “Ukraine.ru"(102,000 views at the time of writing this analysis). “There military commissions are a pure formality. If you have two arms and two legs, you’re good!” — echoes “Sanya in Florida"(487,000 views). Similar publications were published in the channels "Special Operation Z"(40,000 views), "Beating dill 18+" (32,000), "Steppe wind» (28,000), etc.

Viral video. Source: Telegram

Appear in the press from time to time messages about the recruitment of people with mental disabilities into the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and even about acceptance amendments to legislation allowing the mobilization of such citizens. However, according to condition at the time of writing this analysis, Down syndrome (namely this diagnosis put according to the video by some bloggers) was still among the ailments exempting from service in the Ukrainian army.

“Checked” found no signs of the spread of the viral video in the Ukrainian-language segment of social networks, which is strange, given the language spoken by the person behind the scenes and in which the subtitles are given. The only exception is TikTok, or rather, the account @vivkovchuk, from which the video, judging by the watermark, ended up on other platforms. The video was published on September 3 and received 341,000 views.

Man with profile photo @vivkovchuk - clearly not the account owner. Facial recognition service PimEyes defines him as a performer of Hutsul folk music Vasily Skazkiv. This colorful photograph can be found for a long time both on demotivators in the Ukrainian-language segment of the Network, and in Runet.

First videos in the account @vivkovchuk appeared only on September 2 - this is were four videos with views of Ukraine and patriotic slogans. However, the next day a viral video about a soldier with a drone was released, followed by three more: with another fighter, who complains about the lack of rotation, water and other necessary things, another video about a young man with mental disabilities (but with a water pistol), as well as an interview with Ukrainian, who lost his leg at the front. Such a drastic change in content looks suspicious.

The videos themselves raise no less questions. For example, the indignant soldier has an incredibly nasal voice, and the position of his teeth at the beginning and in the middle of the video is radically different, although the position of his lips is approximately the same.

The soldier from the other two videos also does not fully resemble himself. Within a few days, a dent appeared on the helmet and differences in the camouflage pattern.

“Verified” analyzed three videos with men in military uniform using a service to identify AI content DeepFake-o-meter, which was developed by researchers from the University at Buffalo. Some detectors estimated the probability of using neural networks to create this video as close to 100%. In particular, this conclusion was reached by the AVSRDD detector, which specializes in speech testing.