On March 12th, the Facebook user “Оля Рущенко” shared a video in the group “Russian Canada-Русская Канада” with the following description: “Ukrainian fakes are even shown in Algeria.” The TikTok video, which shows a “corpse” wrapped in black cellophane smoking a cigarette, was initially shared on the Facebook page “مصوعة الأسلحة “التكتيكية“(Encyclopedia of Tactical Weapons), which is managed from Lebanon and Iraq. According to the page, the fabrication continues, and Ukraine is trying to exaggerate the casualties caused by the Russian bombs, while one of the corpses is smoking a cigarette during the staged performance.
The claim that Ukraine is faking the number of victims of the war and baselessly accusing Russia is false. The video, in which a corpse wrapped in cellophane smokes a cigarette, actually depicts scenes from the shooting of a clip of Russian rapper Husky. Husky’s clip was posted on YouTube in September 2020, two years before Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.
The video was fact-checked by the “Myth Detector” in 2021, when Georgian social media used the footage as an illustration of “corpse falsification” and denied the coronavirus pandemic.
The verification revealed that the video was first posted on TikTok by Russian artist and designer Vasily Ivanov on March 30th, 2021, indicating that the footage was taken from the clip of the Russian rapper Husky’s song “Никогда-нибудь.”
The video published by Vasily Ivanov vividly shows that the corpses wrapped in black cellophane are being put into an orange truck while one of them smokes a cigarette at the same time. The video clip of the Russian rapper indeed shows a scene with an orange truck full of corpses wrapped in black fabric. The clip was published on YouTube on September 26th, 2020.
For more details, see the article:
- Who is Smoking a Cigarette – “A Corpse” or an Actor?
The disinformation that Russia does not harm civilians in Ukraine is being disseminated rather extensively by the Russian propaganda media. Read more on the topic below:
- A Blogger from Mariupol, Who Was Accused by the Russian Media of Faking a Pregnancy, Gave Birth to a Child
- Who Threatens the Peaceful Population in Mariupol?
- 3 Ukraine-Related Disinformation Disseminated by Russian Propaganda Platforms
- Simonyan’s Claim That the Russian Army does not Pose a Threat to Civilians is Disinformation
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