Shallow Fakes

One of the things I’ve noticed about the war in Ukraine has been the prevalence of fake photos and fake videos being used to advance the West’s propaganda. The images are generally from some previous conflict, and usually not taken in Ukraine. There are so many of them that it makes me wonder whether this war has produced more fakery than previous wars, or whether the earlier fakes went undetected because the search and detection capabilities of the Internet weren’t as advanced as they are now.

The following video from Germany busts some fake video footage put out by the tabloid Bild. The clips used are from 2014 and 2015, and have nothing to do with the current war. Someone peddled them deliberately as disinformation. Was it Bild itself? Or did Bild just get snookered by some other actor?

Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:00   Now we have to deal with something completely psycho, and while you were speaking
00:04   we received images of an explosion of a power plant in Luhansk.
00:09   We’re watching them now. There’s a ball of fire. Dramatic images coming from that location.
00:16   Every where in the entire country we are seeing explosions. As you can hear now as well.
00:24   You are watching and hearing this as well Mr. Bruch. —About the demands from Putin…
00:28   As you speak, we are seeing images of Russian paratroopers landing near Kharkiv.
00:35   It looks like hundreds, thousands. It looks like a swarm of locusts in the sky
00:39   that is descending. This is really absolutely unbelievable.
00:45   These are images of Russian paratroopers invading.
00:49   They are landing there in Ukraine.
00:57   Yes, there’s no way to describe it other than a war.
 

4 thoughts on “Shallow Fakes

  1. Partially right , partially wrong..
    Most important part in your essay is missing..
    Yalta Treaty and Potsdam Treaty and World Order arrived from that..which is finally crumbling in front of our eyes..
    In Europe there are some actors would like to have, same status quo and old West-East geopolitical order ( mostly Russia,Germany France) and century old geopolitical axes in Europe : Paris-Berlin-Moscow..
    But aspirations of New Europe doesn’t accept ” old order , and new European axes North-South are in the proces of making ( 3 Sea Initiative) ..( Bucharest 9 Initiative) or Intermarium…
    West Europe is literally out of juce..Demographic kills them..We in CEE ,Balts and Balkans don’t want to follow their fate..and be a Colonies..
    Old Money see good opportunities in this new geopolitics and axes in Europe..
    Brits exit EU were from the same reason..and UK making strong attempt to be present in this project as well
    A LOT of money from the CITY flooding here since 2009 crash..

  2. We must stop the Hitlerest Hitler of all Hitlers before he reaches Brittanistan by Monday!
    Where will the DOD bioweapon labs and pedo/sex slave trafficking money laundering operations go if Ukraine falls?
    I bet on Anthony Hopkins in the WAR of the Hitlers for his 1980 portrayal im Das Bunker.

  3. The same happened in Libya. Lots of fakes were used to justify the destruction of that prosperous (by African standards) country, which acted as a shield protecting Europe from Sub-Saharan migration. Now Libya is a shambles – tribal wars, open-air slave markets and generalised misery. And it is no longer a shield. Now the West wants to turn Russia into a bigger edition of Libya which will hardly make the rest of the world a happier and more wholesome place.

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