Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 09/01/2023
Photos of combat training for providing first aid and caring for the wounded, taken in Ukraine in 2016, are being shared on social networks as “proof” that this country is faking the victims of the Russian invasion.
On November 20, a collage of four photos was posted on Twitter showing a woman applying makeup to another person’s face and body to make it look like she was hurt. The collage was presented as evidence of the alleged Ukrainian falsification of victims of the Russian invasion.
“New Ukrainian victims, Russian aggression”😠
The shoot can start😂🤣😂
We found the same collage on several other Twitter profiles (link, link, link), where it was shared with descriptions claiming or implying that the image shows faking of the victims. One post claims that the photos were found in the phone of a person employed in the Ukrainian CIPSO (Center for Information and Psychological Operations).
These photos were found on a phone owned by a person, employed in the Ukrainian 🇺🇦 CIPSO (Center for Information and Psychological Operations), which is managed by 🇬🇧 🇺🇸.
🤥they make fake films, record fake testimonies about murders and tortures of Ukrainian civilians by 🇷🇺 and extras work for a salary of 100 dollars.
What are the facts?
The collage that is the subject of this analysis was also shared by users of social networks outside our speaking area, presenting it also as evidence of the alleged Ukrainian faking of the victims. It was also published by the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the United Kingdom.
Numerous fact-checking platforms, including Reuters, Politifact, Myth Detector, Open, Hoaxeye have already written about these incorrect claims.
The collage does not “prove” that Ukraine is faking the victims of the Russian invasion, but instead shows training for treating the wounded from 2016.
One of the photos from the collage was posted on Instagram on June 12, 2016. It was shared with a hashtag which, according to Reuters, suggests that it is about “TCCC training” (Tactical Combat Casualty Care).
The user who posted the photo describes herself as a “veteran of combat medicine” and can be recognized in three of the four photos that make up the collage.
More photos were published under the tag “tccc training”, and one of them is similar to the one from the viral collage.
According to Politifact in its analysis, the second tag, 44 nc, refers to Center 44 in Ukraine, which conducts medical and first aid courses for the military and civilians.
Myth Detector used the PimEyes tool to determine that the photo features Liudmyla Bilek, who leads training for the Ukrainian first aid organization TacCat. Bilek confirmed for this platform that the photos show the training held in 2016 and that they have nothing to do with the ongoing war.
On two occasions, the same person warned on her Twitter profile that her photos were used to spread propaganda (link, link).
Up until now, Raskrinkavanje has repeatedly written about similar examples where photos or recordings from a film set are used as evidence of falsification of Ukrainian victims (link, link). Such manipulations are part of a wider narrative that seeks to question information about the victims of the Russian invasion of this country.
Accordingly, we assess the first publication in which the collage is presented as evidence of falsification of victims and alleged Ukrainian propaganda as fake news. We assess other posts as the distribution of fake news.
