Is the video true about a Ukrainian volunteer from whom a guard extorted money for evacuating people from Donbass?

In mid-October 2025, a video about a military man allegedly demanding a bribe for permission to take residents of front-line settlements to a safe zone went viral on social networks. We have verified the authenticity of this video.

The video begins with a monologue by a man who introduces himself as a volunteer transporting civilians from Konstantinovka, Druzhkovka and other front-line settlements in Donbass. According to him, on the last such trip, an “extremely unpleasant situation” occurred: at a checkpoint, a Ukrainian military man demanded 1,000 UAH from him for entering the city and the same amount for each evacuee. Next, the volunteer cites as evidence the recording he made from the inside of his car. The military man, whose face is not visible, argues for his demand by saying that the volunteer allegedly also takes money from passengers, and he “stands here every day.” To the objection that civilians need help, the military man replies that only “vatniks” and “separatists” remain in the city, and he himself does not have enough money for fuel and clothing. At the end of the video, the volunteer asks the military administration to look into the incident.

This video was published on Telegram by the channels “Ne.Sugar"(171,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Vobla (107,000), Russian criminal (83,000), Z-News (46,000), "Ilya Muromets and Kyiv junkie Ze» (34,000), etc.

During the full-scale Russian invasion, Ukrainian authorities and volunteers help civilians leave populated areas that are approaching the front line, including Konstantinovka And Druzhkovka. First of all, we are talking about elderly and people with limited mobility. The evacuation is carried out by the State Emergency Service and the group supervised by it “Phoenix", special squad of the National Police "White angels"and numerous volunteers from charitable organizations. By messages some residents, there are also “commercial” flights, the organizers of which ask for a lot of money for help with departure.

“Verified” did not find any reports about the situation described in the viral video in the Ukrainian media, and the video was almost not distributed in the Ukrainian-language segment of social networks. It would be logical to assume that law enforcement agencies responded to the alleged volunteer’s statement, as is often the case It happens in such cases, however, we did not find any relevant press releases.

Let's turn to the video itself. Although the face of a person calling himself a volunteer is visible quite clearly, the facial recognition service PimEyes I haven’t found a single similar Ukrainian. Considering that the man is presumably active in public life, this result is at least strange.

In different parts of the video, the volunteer is wearing two different jackets, although the events, judging by the story, take place on the same day in the same car.

If you look closely at this man’s face, you can see that in a conversation he exposes either mainly the upper row of teeth, or mainly the lower one. This is difficult to achieve in natural speech. Moreover, one of this man's teeth appears and disappears.

At the end of the video, the man who is conducting a dialogue with the guard says: “Turn around.” At the same time, he himself sits behind the wheel.

The second hero of the video is a military man who allegedly asks for a bribe. His face was not included in the frame and it is not possible to identify him. The alleged volunteer does not reveal the name and rank of his interlocutor, as well as the place and date of the shooting. Although the video is presented as an appeal to law enforcement agencies with a request to understand the situation, it is not clear how in this case the responsible persons can carry out the check that the recording calls for.

“Verified” analyzed the video using a service to identify AI content DeepFake-o-meter. Based on the results of the analysis of both fragments with the volunteer’s monologue and his dialogue with the guard, several video detectors rated the likelihood of using neural networks as high.

Audio detectors were even more categorical: some, after analyzing the audio track from the video, estimated this probability at 100%.

“Verified” used two more services to identify AI content: Video AI Video Detector And Attestiv. Both also showed a high probability of using neural networks when creating a video.

Judging by the watermark, the original video was posted on TikTok by user @whysososoo. Corresponding fast appeared on October 10 and at the time of writing the analysis had collected more than 300,000 views (judging by the chronology of comments, the video began to be actively watched only six days later, when it went viral on Russian-language Telegram channels). At the same time, the profile itself is essentially empty - there is no information about the owner, who allegedly conducts active volunteer activities. The video with a complaint about corruption is the only one, not counting four reposts of videos with dances to the music of the Thai rapper Lisa.

According to the TGStat service, the video was first published on Telegram by the pro-Russian channel “Freshness» October 16 at 15:42 Moscow time. This channel has already been repeated many times was caught “Checked” in spreading misinformation, and he was often the primary source.

Thus, the video about the extortion of money during the evacuation of Donbass residents was falsified. Numerous artifacts indicate that it was generated by AI. The video was first published on an almost empty TikTok page, and was subsequently distributed by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels.

Cover photo: screenshot of a viral video

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

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