Why Facebook deleted our post: fake video about the Territorial Center for Recruitment and Social Support

Good morning! You probably weren’t expecting this, were you? We’re here to debunk a brain-crushing piece of fake news about the Territorial Center for Recruitment and Social Support. This misinformation, planted by the russians, has nevertheless been widely shared and commented on by many Ukrainians.
What’s it all about?
A video featuring an alleged employee of the Center apologizing to the Ukrainian military has amassed nearly 600,000 views, 1,500 comments, and 10,000 likes on Facebook alone!
“A recruitment officer was mobilized, ended up on the frontline, and sang a different tune,” reads the text superimposed on the video.
The caption of the video states, “An appeal from a former Center employee to everyone, to the people of Ukraine.”
Refutation
We’ve investigated this information and can assure you that it’s fake. Read on to understand the important details.
First, we looked for the original source of this fake news. We identified the TikTok account with the watermark “petrotremcykvolin” on the video, took a screenshot, and uploaded it to the “Pictures” section of different search engines. It’s always best to use multiple search engines to obtain more results.
Google revealed that the video was uploaded to russian Telegram channels and websites during the second half of June. Many posts featured the same text, and each video bore a TikTok watermark, indicating that TikTok was likely the original source. From there, the video spread across various trash sites.
Next, we revisited the TikTok page. Examining its previous content, we found it inactive, indicating it was created solely for this video.
By accessing the page code, we discovered that the video was uploaded on the morning of June 16, 2024, coinciding with its appearance on russian trash sites.
(To view the page code, right-click on the page and select “View page source” or press Ctrl+U. Alternatively, you can use this service: bellingcat github. (We don’t provide the exact link to avoid Facebook mistaking it for spam.)
Creating a page for a single fake news post is a common tactic among russian propagandists. If the original source were a media outlet or a Telegram channel, it would be easier to expose this “scheme.”
On newly created pages, russian propagandists use Ukrainian symbols, videos, and photos of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to confuse people and gain trust.
Now let’s examine the video itself. You can tell from the man’s eyes that the video has been manipulated — his eye movements are unnatural. Additionally, the contours of the objects blur with the alleged camera movements.
You may have seen similar videos before, often made for amusement, featuring Ukrainian officials supposedly cursing the occupiers.
To create such an effect, it’s likely that a photo or a brief segment of some video was used. The movement of the man’s lips partially aligns with his speech, but don’t be deceived; modern artificial intelligence has long mastered such tricks.
Now, about the soundtrack. It sounds very grunge-like. We used the Detect Resemble resource (we don’t provide the correct link to avoid Facebook mistaking it for spam) to verify if the track was processed by AI. The resource concluded that the sound was fake.
However, you only need to listen to it yourself to realize the sound is indeed fake.
The russian occupiers focused on the language in their scenario. Here’s the scenario: the Center employee starts speaking russian and is repeatedly told to “speak the state language!” He then begins speaking flawed Ukrainian. You can see this at 9-13 seconds into the video.
Brief summary of the signs of fake news:
- It’s unlikely that the Ukrainian military would force a Center employee to his knees and make him publicly apologize. The military, more than anyone, is interested in having newly mobilized people replace them;
- The words were deliberately chosen to have an emotional impact on the viewer: references to illegal mobilization, mention of relatives, atonement for sins, and potential execution;
- It’s obvious that the sound is superimposed on the video and processed by AI.
As soon as the video was published, it was shared on russian pages with anti-Ukrainian content. It’s likely that the authors of this video are spreading it from the “original source” on their own promoted pages and channels. This practice helps to ensure that the video reaches the Ukrainian segment of the Internet as quickly as possible.
If the video were real, we would hear more natural speech and proper sentence construction, and see it in better quality. It would also be distributed mainly from Ukrainian resources. Considering all these elements, we have a 99% probability that this is a fake