How a fake story about Russia capturing British officers circulated in 13 countries

Yahoo

a day ago

Several pro-Russian websites have reported that two British army officers were captured by Russian special forces during a raid into Ukraine. It turns out, however, that the story is false and the photos meant to show the captured soldiers were generated by artificial intelligence. But that hasn't stopped this fake news item from being spread in at least 13 countries.
The photo is "the first concrete proof that NATO is actively carrying out a war against Russia,' claimed reseauinternational[.]net, a website that has been identified as a disseminator of false information, on August 3. During a raid on a Ukrainian command centre in Ochakiv, a town in southern Ukraine, Russian special forces allegedly captured two British colonels, Richard Carroll and Edward Blake, as well as an unidentified agent from MI6, the United Kingdom's intelligence services.
When the British officers were captured, they were in full uniform and were carrying both secret military documents and diplomatic passports, reported Eurasia Daily, a Russian news agency that frequently shares the Kremlin's propaganda. As proof, the media outlet posted a photo of the capture that was also widely shared on social media. The media outlet reported that the British government at first denied that the officers had been captured, then claimed that they were tourists. Soon, however, they were purportedly trying to negotiate a prisoner exchange, which the Russians refused.
Images generated by AI
However, the supposed proof of the officers' arrest is actually fake. If you take a closer look at the photo, you'll see that the words on the prisoner's passports are actually illegible, which suggests that the images were AI-generated. The crest on the front of the passport is also scrambled and doesn't look like one that appears on authentic passports.
Another photo also circulated online, this one said to show the officers in prison. But this image, too, was generated by AI. The first clue is that the officers who appear in the second photo look nothing like the officers in the first image. The next clue is that the badges on their shoulders are scrambled. In the British Army, the insignia for a colonel is two stars under a crown. But in the photo, there is no crown to be seen. In fact, one of the supposed colonels is actually wearing the insignia for a sergeant.
Finally, there has been no official communication about the colonels from the British government and no mention of their capture in British media outlets.
A fake news item disseminated in at least 13 countries
Where did this disinformation come from?
The fake news was shared in France by Pravda-fr. Viginum, the French government organisation tasked with fighting foreign digital interference, has identified this site as part of the Russian disinformation network Portal Kombat.
This disinformation was also spread by the Russian news agency Tass, which reported on the capture of the British military officers on August 6. In a wire story in Russian, the agency claimed that the information came from Steigan, a pro-Russian Norwegian news site known to share conspiracy theories. However, the Norwegian outlet actually deleted its article on August 4 about the capture of British officers, saying that the information hadn't been sufficiently verified.
Steigan said that the source of its story was the Hal Turner Radio Show, a US-based radio programme run by Harold Charles "Hal" Turner, an American political commentator who has both pro-Russian and anti-Semitic views.
The fake news story about the capture of the British officers did the rounds across a series of sites that feed into one another, including media outlets affiliated to Russia like Pravda, Tass and Eurasia Daily and the international "Russosphere", which includes pro-Russia sites like reseauinternational[.]net in France. This disinformation was also picked up by several traditional media outlets: on August 5, AL24, an Algerian television channel, hosted a 24-minute debate about the soldiers' capture.
Our team discovered that the fake news story about the Russian capture of British officers was shared in at least 13 different countries, including everywhere from Serbia and Hungary to Pakistan and Vietnam.