A widely shared video shows a young man in tears in the back of a military vehicle saying, “I’ve been mobilized, I’m heading to Chasiv Yar… Help me, I don’t want to die. I’m only 23. Please help me.” The clip has circulated in many languages across social media and many versions have racked up millions of views.
Claim: “Ukrainian men as young as 23 are being conscripted and sent to the front.” DW fact check: False.
The claim is incorrect on two counts. Legally, Ukraine lowered its conscription age from 27 to 25 in April 2024, not to 23. Factually, the video itself is synthetic: it was generated with artificial intelligence. Visual errors—such as a poorly fitting helmet inconsistent with standard Ukrainian military equipment—are among the signs the clip is fake.
A facial-recognition search identified the face in the video as Vladimir Yuryevich Ivanov, a Russian streamer from St. Petersburg who goes by the online name Kussia88. His online profiles include numeric codes (e.g., 1488, 8814) associated with neo-Nazi symbolism; his Twitch account has over 1.3 million followers and has faced at least one temporary ban. DW attempted to contact Ivanov but had not received a response by publication.
The AI clip appears to have first spread from a now-deleted TikTok account, @fantomoko, which posted dozens of similar AI-generated clips purporting to show Ukrainian soldiers crying in vehicles. Some of those uploads had hundreds of thousands to millions of views; the most popular exceeded two million views. Several videos bore the watermark “Sora,” linked to OpenAI’s image-generation branding.
Another person whose likeness was used in multiple clips is Aleksei Gubanov, a critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin now living in New York. Gubanov told DW he has “absolutely no connection” to the videos, saying they were created without his consent and designed to stir public outrage. He condemned the use of AI-generated fake media for manipulation and propaganda.
Ivanov has responded on Telegram sarcastically to suggestions of involvement, but regardless of his stance or whether he knowingly participated, the clips spreading the “23-year-old conscript” narrative are fabricated. The video does not prove forced conscription of 23‑year‑olds and is an example of AI-manipulated content that can be weaponized to amplify disinformation.
