Between February 7 and 9, Russian-language Facebook accounts spread claims (1; 2; 3; 4; 5) alleging that Ukrainian athletes participating in the Winter Olympic Games in Milan were placed as far away as possible from athletes of other countries in the Olympic Village because they allegedly caused numerous problems for others during the Paris Olympics. According to the authors of the posts, this was reported by a journalist in a segment aired by the Canadian broadcaster CBC.
Most of the posts are accompanied by a video bearing the CBC logo, in which the supposed journalist is shown reviewing the Olympic Village in Milan and then claims that Italian organizers took into account the mistakes made during the Paris Olympics and deliberately housed Ukrainian athletes as far away from others as possible, alleging that they displayed toxic behavior in 2024.
A fabricated video using CBC footage is being circulated with the aim of discrediting Ukrainian athletes. The claim that CBC reported Ukrainian athletes were deliberately isolated from others at the Winter Olympics currently taking place in Milan is false. In the circulated video, only the first part belongs to CBC; in the second part, the voice has most likely been generated using artificial intelligence.
All Facebook posts spreading this claim state that the original source of the information is the Canadian broadcaster CBC. In addition, the uploaded video displays the outlet’s logo – “CBCNEWS; The National” – in the upper left corner. Based on this, we attempted to locate the footage on CBC’s official website and social media accounts. As a result of our search, we found the original footage uploaded on February 4 on CBC News’ YouTube channel. In the authentic video, The National’s chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault is reporting from the Olympic Village built for the Winter Olympic Games in Milan. By comparing the videos, we established that only the first 15 seconds of the footage circulating on Facebook match the authentic video. After that point, both the audio and the video have been altered. After the first 15 seconds, the falsified version shows Arsenault allegedly stating that Ukrainian athletes behaved aggressively during the Paris Olympics and caused numerous problems for athletes from other countries, which Italian organizers allegedly took into account by housing them as far away from everyone else as possible. In reality, the journalist does not mention Ukrainian athletes at all in the authentic video. From the 16th second onward, she continues discussing the Olympic Village, showing residential buildings, the dining hall, and the courtyard. She refers only to Canadian athletes, including hockey players, noting that identical accommodation has been allocated for all of them.
We also analyzed the audio heard in the second part of the video circulating on Facebook using Hiya, an AI-detection tool built into InVID. The analysis showed, with 99% certainty, that the audio contains traces of artificial intelligence.
Beyond the tool’s assessment, the speaking style and tempo in the second part of the audio differ noticeably from the journalist’s natural speech. The speaker delivers sentences and words without pauses or breaks – a characteristic often associated with AI-generated audio. Therefore, it is highly likely that the voice heard over the generic footage in the second part of the video was generated using artificial intelligence.
In reality, the 2026 Milan Winter Olympic Games are being held not only in Milan but also in five other mountain cities located at a considerable distance from Milan. As a result, six relatively small Olympic Villages had to be built, and unlike the traditional Olympic arrangement, representatives of a single country are not necessarily housed in the same building. This also applies to Ukrainian athletes, who are distributed across different villages in different cities depending on their sport and competition venues.
About the sources:
The Russian-language Facebook accounts Svetlana Rimsa and Elena Sokolova, which published the video about Ukrainian athletes, regularly disseminate anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western content. Numerous posts by these accounts have been identified as disinformation by various fact-checking organizations.
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