A widely shared clip showing a young man crying in the back of a military vehicle and saying he had been mobilized for Chasiv Yar, begging for help and claiming to be 23, is not authentic. The social media posts that used the video to claim that Ukrainian men as young as 23 are being conscripted are misleading. DW fact check: False.
Why the claim is wrong
1) Legal inaccuracy: Ukraine lowered its conscription age in April 2024 from 27 to 25, not to 23. The assertion that 23-year-olds are being lawfully drafted is therefore incorrect.
2) The video itself is synthetic: technical and visual evidence indicate the clip was generated with artificial intelligence. Observers noted visual errors such as a poorly fitting helmet that does not match standard Ukrainian military gear, among other inconsistencies, which point to manipulation rather than genuine footage.
Who was used in the clip
A facial-recognition search identified the face in the video as belonging to Vladimir Yuryevich Ivanov, a Russian streamer from St. Petersburg known online as Kussia88. Ivanov has a large Twitch following of more than 1.3 million and has had at least one temporary ban on the platform. His online profiles include numeric codes such as 1488 and 8814, symbols associated with neo-Nazi imagery. DW attempted to contact Ivanov but had not received a response by the time of publication.
Another person whose likeness was used in multiple similar clips is Aleksei Gubanov, a critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin who now lives in New York. Gubanov told DW he had absolutely no connection to the videos and said they were created without his consent to provoke outrage. He publicly condemned the use of AI-generated media for manipulation and propaganda.
How the clips spread
The AI-generated material appears to have first circulated from a now-deleted TikTok account, @fantomoko, which uploaded dozens of similar videos purporting to show Ukrainian soldiers crying in vehicles. Several of those uploads accumulated hundreds of thousands to millions of views; the most popular exceeded two million views. Some videos displayed a watermark reading Sora, which has been linked to OpenAI image-generation branding, further indicating synthetic origins.
Implications
Regardless of any individual reaction from people whose likenesses were used, the clip does not prove forced conscription of 23-year-olds. It is an example of how AI-manipulated media can be weaponized to amplify disinformation, inflame emotions, and spread false narratives across languages and platforms. Viewers should be cautious about viral footage and check authoritative fact-checks and official sources before sharing or accepting such claims.
