Video of young Ukrainian soldier crying is AI-generated
- Published on November 20, 2025 at 19:55
- 5 min read
- By Elena CRISAN, AFP Austria
- Translation and adaptation Marisha GOLDHAMER , AFP Canada
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Russian propaganda has frequently targeted tensions in Ukraine over the military's aggressive recruitment policy, under which men from age 25 have been drafted to serve in its war against the neighboring invader. One widely shared video purporting to show a 23-year-old conscript sobbing about being sent to the battlefront is inauthentic; an AFP analysis revealed the clip is generated by artificial intelligence.
"23 year old CRIES as he's sent to the front lines," says text over an image shared to Facebook on November 3, 2025.
"Imagine living in a Country that proclaims Peace yet sends billions to support War!" the post's caption adds, in an apparent appeal to Canadians.
Similar posts show a 15-second video of the same soldier saying: "I don't want to die." They spread across social media in multiple languages, including French, German, Polish, Slovak and Spanish.
"A 23-year-old Ukrainian, tears in his eyes, was forced to join the army and is being sent to the front lines to fight," one such post claims.
Since 2022, Ukraine has received significant military assistance from its allies, including $6.5 billion committed by Canada (archived here). Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Kiev in August for Ukrainian Independence Day, and pledged continued support to Ukraine via the "coalition of the willing."
Disinformation seeking to undermine Western support for Ukraine has spread widely (archived here) since Russia's invasion.
The emotional appeal from the purported young conscript is not authentic. An AFP analysis found the clip was generated with artificial intelligence.
Origin of the clip
A reverse image search using screenshots from the video surfaced similar images on the now-unavailable TikTok account "@fantomoko." The handle was also visible in certain posts spread across other platforms.
Before it disappeared, the TikTok account had posted several videos purporting to show of Ukrainian soldiers crying. Some included the Sora watermark, indicating that they were created using US software company OpenAI's video-generating tool.
Other videos showed signs of image manipulation. In one case, a soldier was shedding tears that resembled drops of blood.
In older videos, the account used the same protagonists but depicted them as Russian soldiers with red, white and blue flags on their uniforms, according to an investigation by the Italian group Open, which also concluded the videos are AI-generated (archived here).
Using the facial-recognition service Pimeyes, AFP found evidence that a Russian streamer named "Kussia88" may have been used as the model for the face in the posts claiming to show a 23-year-old Ukrainian soldier.
On November 13, the streamer shared a report from the Swedish television channel SVT about the video via his Telegram channel (archived here).
"I was the subject of a report in the Swedish media," he said in a comment.
AFP reached out to the streamer for additional comment, but no response was forthcoming.
Visual inconsistencies
AFP also identified moments throughout the video where the soldier's uniform changes.
A screw on the helmet is flat at first, then later morphs to curve inward.
The black button on the side of the helmet also starts out flat before a sharp edge appears.
And the camouflage pattern on the sleeve changes slightly from one moment to the next.
Additionally, the uniform does not match those of the official Ukrainian Armed Forces, as seen in an image shared on X by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (archived here). Black hooks that hold the helmet's elastic are missing, and the proportions differ from images available on the website for the manufacturer, Uarms (archived here).
AI audio
Hiya, the voice-cloning detection tool within the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, assessed that the clip's audio was "likely AI generated."
It can pinpoint AI-generated text-to-speech in audio files and showed a "clear recognition despite background noise," said Denis Teyssou, head of the innovation department for the InVID and WeVerify projects at AFP (archived here).
"An authentic file contains no traces of AI generation," Teyssou said November 6, 2025.
Further analysis using the Deepfake Total tool, developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security, concluded that 53.4 percent of the audio file was "cloned" by AI.
Military conscription
Faced with significant losses and a far smaller pool for troops than Russia, Ukraine has repeatedly passed legislation to broaden its recruitment base, making conscription a sensitive topic in the country.
In 2024, Ukraine's President Zelensky Volodymyr lowered the age for drafting soldiers from 27 to 25, but he has rejected calls from Washington to conscript men starting at age 18.
In June 2025, he also signed a law allowing men over 60 -- the former age limit for military service -- to fill non-combat positions if cleared by a medical board.
To convince young people to serve, Kyiv offers 18- to 24-year-olds special one-year contracts, a sign-up bonus of $24,000 and monthly salaries of $2,800 -- much more than conscripts 25 and over get.
The man in the video circulating online claims to be 23-years-old and mentions the deployment to Chasiv Yar, a strategically important town located in the fiercely contested Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, which is largely controlled by Russia.
But the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation called the video a "deepfake" in a November 4, 2025 X post, confirming that "only volunteers" serve before the age of 25 (archived link here).
Find all of AFP's debunks related to the war in Ukraine here.
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