Russian propaganda distributing fake video with NATO logo

Russia continues its campaign to discredit employees of military recruitment centers

Russian pro-war Telegram channels, Kremlin media outlets and bots on YouTube are sharing a video allegedly created by the press service of the North Atlantic Alliance. The video shows the U.S. military leadership allegedly preparing to send instructors from the Israeli Krav Maga hand-to-hand combat system to Ukraine, where they will teach military personnel from military recruitment centers to protect themselves from Ukrainians who do not want to be mobilized.

This is a fake video. Such a video was not posted on the official NATO website and the social networks of the organization.

At the beginning of the original NATO videos, the organization's logo is animated and gradually appears in the upper right corner for a few seconds (first a star, then a circle), while in the fake video, it is not animated.

The video itself consists of clips that can be found in the public domain.

In particular, the clips with "American instructors" in the martial art of Krav Maga belong to Israeli, Greek and Italian athletes. They can be found on the social media networks of such organizations as Krav-maga Protection, Krav-maga Training and F.R.M krav-maga.

For forgery, Russian propagandists even used self-defense video lessons of athletes from Ukraine. The President of the Krav Maga Federation of Ukraine, Anton Farba, was portrayed as an "American instructor."

The fake video also used videos with representatives of military recruitment centers, which can be easily found on the internet.

Dmytro Pletenchuk, spokesperson for Ukraine's southern defense forces, said that Russian propagandists were launching an act of information sabotage to discredit the employees of the military recruitment centers.

"The Russians are currently shooting a series of fake videos, doing this in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine so that the surrounding scenery corresponds as much as possible to Ukrainian realities, where they try to show Ukrainian military personnel in a bad light, first of all, military personnel from military recruitment centers. That is, a series of videos are being prepared, where they will behave as inappropriately as possible in various situations, including drinking alcoholic beverages or doing similar bad things. We are waiting for new such videos," Pletenchuk said.

Andriy Olenin