The international delegation, headed by Ana Lucía Bueno, ICRC Public Health Coordinator, and Sujit Panda, Head of the Physical Rehabilitation…
Russia’s fake-production factory seems to have entered a new season.
The plot, of course, is old — like their own manuals — but this time they invited… artificial intelligence for the role of the “script”. Because the Kremlin’s directors failed to find a real Ukrainian soldier willing to record such a statement.
“A soldier without facial expression”: how Russia uses AI where truth cannot be found
The video circulated by Russian sources has all the classic signs of AI generation:
- Zero facial expression. The character’s face moves about as naturally as a mannequin in a military surplus store.
- No blinking. As if the character is either a robot or has been staring too long at his queue in a Russian enlistment office.
- Lips disconnected from the speech. No synchronization — a typical deepfake defect.
The “original source”? A newly-created TikTok account with no history, no media activity, no connection to service members. Essentially: “someone just registered to tell the world the truth”.
Why Russia again stamps fakes about ‘evil commanders’ and ‘abandoned soldiers’
Because this is not about informing but about information-psychological operations aimed at:
- distorting society’s perception of the real situation on the frontline;
- undermining trust in military-political leadership;
- shaking stability and Ukrainians’ faith in their own army;
- causing fatigue and emotional exhaustion.
These attempts occur while, as of February 20, 2026, Russia continues to suffer serious losses. In just the past day — 970 occupiers, 6 AFVs, 2 tanks, and 107 destroyed/suppressed strike UAVs out of 128.
At the same time, Ukrainian unmanned-systems units struck 643 targets in one day, including three tanks, four artillery systems, and hundreds of enemy personnel.
Against this backdrop, inventing a myth about “Ukrainian soldiers in a pit without heat” is like trying to hide a wildfire with a napkin.
Fake as a genre: “we can’t do anything on the battlefield, but here’s a TikTok video”
Russian propaganda long ago realized it has problems with real facts. Therefore, it actively uses AI as a new tool for old manipulations.
Fakes require no logic, no evidence, no real people or real stories. Just a digital mask and a voice reading a pre-written text.
But the propagandists’ problem is that AI cannot hide lies — it only optimizes them. The structure of the lie remains: taking things out of context, emotional pressure, dehumanization, and imitation of “internal criticism”.
Why this fake failed even before publication
- No confirmation of the “soldier’s” identity.
- No visual evidence of real location.
- AI face, AI audio, AI plot — everything artificial except the disinformation.
- The context does not match the real frontline situation.
In short: the Russians created a video so poor that even their own “experts” hesitate to call it real.
While Ukraine holds the sky, Russia holds only its fakes
While Ukrainian Defense Forces repel attacks, shoot down enemy drones, and deliver real strikes on real targets daily, Russian propaganda continues filming its parallel reality.
And if their army is really “second in the world”, then only in the nomination:
“For the best deepfake performance in a film about an imaginary soldier in a swamp”.
Ukrainian society has long learned to distinguish between reality and fiction. And Russian AI videos only confirm: they lost long ago — now they try at least to win on TikTok.
