File photo- Ukranian soldier
“I’ve been mobilized, I’m heading to Chasiv Yar,” says what appears to be a young Ukrainian soldier through floods of tears in the back of a military vehicle. “Help me, I don’t want to die. I’m only 23. Please help me.”A reverse image search using screenshots reveals that the video has been posted hundreds of times on social media, racking up millions of views and pushing the message that Ukraine is drafting young men against their will to replace losses on the battlefield amid the continuing Russian invasion.DW found the video shared across various social media platforms in a dozen different languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanishand Russian. The most viral instance of the video appeared on a Hungarian X account, where it had been viewed at least 1.8 million times.Claim: “Ukrainian men as young as 23 are being conscripted and sent to the front”DW Fact check: FalseHowever, not only is the video factually incorrect (the minimum conscription age in Ukraine was lowered from 27 to 25 in April 2024, but never to 23), but it is also fake, to be precise: it was generated by artificial intelligence. This is clear from visual inaccuracies in the video, such as the poorly-fitting helmet, which doesn’t match standard Ukrainian military equipment.Not only that, a basic facial recognition searchreveals that the face is actually that of Vladimir Yuryevich Ivanov, a young Russian streamer from St. Petersburg who uses the online pseudonym Kussia88.Who is Kussia88?On its own, “kussia” (pronounced “kasha”) means “porridge” in Russian (каша). But the use of “88” (neo-Nazi code for “Heil Hitler”) and the Latin transcription using a double “SS” are no coincidence.Nor is the use of the letters “IA”. In international neo-Nazi circles, “IA” would be understood to mean “14” — a code referring to the “14 words”propagated by American neo-Nazi David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The slogans have served as a rallying cry for militant white nationalists internationally. Indeed, the numbers 1488 and 8814 appear in the URL and profile description of Ivanov’s accounts on TikTok and Boosty(a Russian platform that enables content creators to earn regular income through subscriptions and donations from their community).According to several Reddit chats, Ivanov’s Twitch account, which has over 1.3 million followers, has been subject to at least one temporary ban in recent months.The AI video using Ivanov’s face seems to have first appeared on the now-deleted TikTok channel @fantomoko, along with dozens of other similar AI clips, all supposedly depicting Ukrainian soldiers crying in military vehicles.Most only seem to have been viewed a few thousand times, but two had over 800,000 views, one had over 1.5 million views and the most popular had over 2.1 million. Some of the videos even featured the watermark “Sora,” OpenAI’s image generator.Another face that appears regularly on clips posted by the @fantomoko account was that of Aleksei Gubanov, a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Gubanov, who now lives in New York, told DW that he has “absolutely no connection” to the clips. “All of them were created by someone using AI and without my consent or involvement.”He added he had warned his audience “that someone is deliberately trying to stir public outrage by creating this kind of content. Those videos play directly into Russian propaganda narratives and gain millions of views. To be absolutely clear — I did not create, approve, or participate in any of those videos, and I strongly condemn the use of AI-generated fake media for manipulation or propaganda.” DW also reached out to Ivanov but had not received a response by the time of publication. According to the Ukrainian database “Stars about war,” which documents celebrities’ positions on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ivanov does not typically comment on the war and was once reprimanded by the Russian authorities for mocking the children of mobilized soldiers. After that, he reportedly apologized in a video shot against the background of a Russian flag, and stated that Crimea is Russian.Screenshot of Russian streamer Ivanov (aka Kussia88) posting a comment in Russian that translates as: “The Twitter crowd have finally got on board the hype train.”Screenshot of Russian streamer Ivanov (aka Kussia88) posting a comment in Russian that translates as: “The Twitter crowd have finally got on board the hype train.”‘The Twitter crowd have finally got on board the hype train,’ responds Kussia, sarcastically.Image: TelegramOn his Telegram channel, he responded to suggestions that he was involved with the AI videos and that he is a “pro-Putin Nazi” sarcastically, saying: “The Twitter crowd have finally learned what ‘delivery’ means” — Russian Twitch slang effectively meaning: “They’ve finally got on board the hype train.”Either way, regardless of whether Ivanov was actively involved in their creation or not, and regardless of his views, the videos going viral remain entirely fake. 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