On 3 November, a Russian-language Facebook account published a video collage showing people dressed in military uniforms informing relatives of American soldiers about their deaths. The video is accompanied by the caption, “What did they expect? Americans are returning from Ukraine.”
The circulated footage does not show families of American soldiers killed in Ukraine. Most of the clips are staged, and in one of them we see the family of U.S. Army Corporal Luis Ruan. Ruan died in 2019 as a result of injuries sustained during training.
The video collage contains eight different clips. Myth Detector was able to identify six of them. Of these, five are staged scenes belonging to different internet content creators.
In the first and third clips of the video, we see the same person. In the first video he plays a father who is notified of his son’s death during a class/lecture, while in the third video the same person appears lying in a hospital bed. The first video is available on the Facebook page of the person shown in it. He calls himself Jon W., and the page indicates that he is a comedian. A slightly different version of this video can be seen on the YouTube channel of another content creator, Rodrigo Navarro (The Rodrigo Show). In another version of this scene, Jon W. plays a teacher who is informed of his son’s death (in this case, no military personnel appear in the frame).
Rodrigo Navarro himself also appears in the circulated video collage. In the fourth clip of the collage, Navarro plays a man who is informed about the death of his military wife. In this case, several different versions of the video have been uploaded to his YouTube channel (1; 2). In addition, the channel features other scenes filmed at the same location with the same actors; for example, one scene portrays a soldier returning home only to discover that her husband is cheating (1; 2).
The fifth and sixth clips in the video collage are also staged by content creators. The fifth video, showing a woman dressed in a black dress, belongs to Rick Lax and was published in September 2024. The sixth clip, showing a grieving woman in a white shirt, was posted in April 2025 on the Facebook page of the actor couple Jamie and Blake.
Unlike these videos, the second clip in the collage depicts a real event. The video shows the grieving mother of U.S. Army Corporal Luis Ruan. Ruan suffered a head injury during training on 22 January 2019 in the U.S. state of Texas and died on 20 April 2020 after spending more than a year in a coma (1; 2). Myth Detector could not trace the sources of the seventh and eighth clips in the collage.
The scenes shown in the video contradict the strictly regulated U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) procedures for death notifications, including:
- Notification is always conducted in person. Delivering such information by phone or in a chaotic manner is strictly prohibited.
- A special team is assigned to carry out the notification, consisting of at least two uniformed service members – the Casualty Notification Officer (CNO) and often a chaplain for emotional support.
- Notification must occur within no more than 12 hours after the military headquarters receives a report of the death. Ideally, notification should take place at the family’s home, not elsewhere such as at work.
Accordingly, some of the circulated clips do not conform to U.S. military protocol.
As for American soldiers in Ukraine, the U.S. has not officially reported any deaths of active-duty service members in Ukraine. Since the start of the war, Ukrainian soldiers have been receiving training not in Ukraine but in NATO countries (for example, the United Kingdom and Germany). However, it is known that more than 90 American volunteers (civilians or former military personnel) have been killed.
Prepared by Davit Robakidze and Sandro Kapanadze
“Myth Detector” Lab
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