AI-generated video falsely shows Ukrainian troops posing as civilians

· OSINT

TLDR

  • Russian propaganda outlets and TikTok and Telegram accounts are circulating a video that claims to show Ukrainian soldiers changing into civilian clothes, including disguising themselves as elderly women.
  • Ukrinform's fact-check found the clip is AI-generated, with unnatural facial movement and unstable lip-sync during speech.
  • Three deepfake-detection models (TALL, WAV2LIP-STA, XCLIP) rated it 86 to 99.6 percent likely synthetic; a separate tool, CudekAI, put it at 99 percent.
  • The TikTok account that posted it had one video and 47 followers, and its profile photo traces back at least ten years via reverse image search.

Ukrinform's verification team flagged the clip for unnatural movement in the character's face and lips during the conversation, with some expressions and articulation appearing unstable in ways consistent with synthetic video.1 Running the clip through the DeepFake-O-Meter platform, the TALL, WAV2LIP-STA, and XCLIP models rated the likelihood of AI generation at 99.5, 86.1, and 99.6 percent respectively, and a separate tool, CudekAI, classified it as 99 percent likely AI-generated.1 The TikTok account that posted the clip, @rubebune, had only one video and 47 followers at the time of verification, and a TinEye reverse image search traced its profile picture to an image published online at least ten years earlier.1

The video reproduces a narrative Russian outlets have pushed before. In December 2025, Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation reported claims that Ukrainian troops in civilian clothing had deliberately fired on civilians in Pokrovsk, part of what the center described as a broader campaign of fabricated accusations against Ukrainian forces.1 Ukrainian sources have separately reported the opposite: in October 2025, a Ukrainian drone-unit commander described Russian servicemen changing into civilian clothes to approach Ukrainian positions undetected.1

Why it matters: posing as a protected civilian to gain a military advantage is perfidy under the Geneva Conventions, so a fabricated video accusing the other side of it is not just disinformation, it is an attempt to justify targeting civilians by claiming they might not be.1

Sources

  1. Russian propaganda spreads AI-generated video allegedly showing Ukrainian troops disguising themselves as civilians on front line (Ukrinform)