Clip shows music video shoot, not staged Ukrainian battlefield
- Published on March 4, 2025 at 20:45
- 3 min read
- By Daniel Patrick GALGANO, AFP USA
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"BREAKING: Ukraine 'soldiers' have resorted to faking combat in order to appear 'war torn' so the slush fund from the U.S. keeps churning money their way!" says a March 1, 2025 X post with thousands of interactions.
It includes a video showing a woman in fatigues having dirt and makeup applied to her face while surrounded by other soldiers.
The same claim has circulated elsewhere on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn and Gettr.
Following a spat with Zelensky in the Oval Office, Trump suspended critical military aid to Ukraine, halting the flow of American equipment to the country's armed forces.
Kyiv has pledged to resist Russia's invasion and maintain ties with Washington despite the move. At the same time, European leaders have promised to step up defense spending and assemble a coalition to defend Ukraine in a truce.
Disinformation targeted at Ukraine and Zelensky has surged as the Kyiv-Washington wartime alliance dramatically collapsed and posts are misrepresenting this video as part of an effort regain favor by faking combat conditions.
The clip includes the name of a TikTok account called "vitsikkkk2," run by a Ukrainian combat medic who uses the call sign "Vitsik" and posted the same footage in February (archived here).
Contacted by AFP, Vitsik said by email that the clip was part of the production of a music video for the song "Brothers" performed by the medic and artist Misha Scorpion (archived here). He said the video's cast are all members of Ukraine's armed forces.
Both the descriptions of the TikTok post and the music video thank Maryana Checheliuk -- a then 22-year-old police officer who was taken prisoner by the Russian military in Mariupol in 2022 but was released in June 2024 -- for participating in the shoot. She and her family told reporters she was beaten and starved while in captivity, and her story was widely circulated in Ukrainian and other European media.
Checheliuk appears at multiple points in the finished music video, with dirt on her face similar to that in the online clip.
Checheliuk responded to the clip circulating in the false context in a March 2 Instagram post, labeling posts claiming Ukrainian soldiers were faking battles a "blatant lie" (archived here).
The Center for Countering Disinformation, a Ukrainian government agency, also called the claims "manipulation" in a March 3 post on X (archived here).
See all of AFP's reporting on claims about the war in Ukraine here.
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