On 19-20 November, Georgian- and Russian-language Facebook accounts, including Maya Tvaltvadze, a Facebook user who frequently spreads disinformation, published a video of a Ukrainian soldier’s TV appearance in which he allegedly talks about microchipping people mobilized for war. In the video, the soldier asks why, in the 21st century, when even dogs are microchipped, “they” can’t also be implanted with chips so they can be located and returned using GPS. According to the attached description, the soldier is referring to those mobilized into Ukraine’s army. On 18 November, another Facebook page also spread an identical claim without the video.
On 17 November, identical stories were published by Russian-language media (Известия; RG.RU; EA Daily; Gazeta.ru).
The video circulating about microchipping mobilized soldiers has been digitally manipulated. Real footage from Kyiv 24’s live broadcast was used to create the clip. In reality, the guest appearing on air at the time was Dmytro Kukharchuk, who said nothing about implanting chips in mobilized soldiers.
According to Facebook posts, the footage supposedly belongs to the TV channel Kyiv 24. One post claims that desertion has become a massive problem for Ukraine’s army, with some forcibly mobilized soldiers crossing over to fight for Russia and others quietly slipping away.
The video shows the Kyiv 24 logo. In the upper-left corner there is also a caption reading “1357th day of the war.” The channel’s YouTube page contains full recordings of past live broadcasts, including those from the 1357th day of the Russia-Ukraine war – 11 November (1; 2).
In the video spread on Facebook, we see the Ukrainian soldier joining the program at 19:50. The real recording shows that at that time the guest joining the broadcast was Dmytro Kukharchuk, Deputy Commander of the 3rd Army Corps of Ukraine’s Ground Forces. He did indeed talk about draft evasion, but he attributed the problem to poor training of new recruits, lack of rotation for soldiers on the front line, and unfair mobilization practices. Kukharchuk did not say anything about implanting chips in mobilized soldiers.
The person shown in the circulating video does not resemble Kukharchuk visually. We checked the video’s audio using the voice detector tool Hiya, which indicated a 99% probability that artificial intelligence was used to generate the audio.
To identify the person shown in the video, we used the image search tool Pimeyes, but we were unable to find other photos of the individual.
The outlet Delfi also analyzed the video and concluded that the audio in it was very likely generated using artificial intelligence.
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