By Daniel Dale
Pro-Russia accounts on social media are trying to convince the public not to believe accurate news reports about Ukrainians suffering and dying.
To sow doubt, the pro-Russia accounts, joined by accounts that are critical of the “mainstream media,” are spreading false claims that media outlets have been broadcasting phony footage of Ukrainian “crisis actors“: happy, healthy people who are merely playing the role of terrified or deceased war victims for the cameras.
Videos that are being falsely described as depicting Ukrainian “crisis actors” have been viewed millions of times on various social media platforms over the past two weeks. Thousands of people appear to have shared these videos because they had been duped, not because they were maliciously trying to spread incorrect information.
Their confusion is unfortunate but understandable. False claims about “crisis actors” rely on a two-step process that can be bewildering to people who aren’t experts on conspiratorial thinking.
Here’s how the deception works.
First, the people behind the deception find videos that were indeed staged — but staged for benign purposes unrelated to the war in Ukraine. One example is footage of actors pretending to be terrified during a 2013 film shoot for a British science fiction movie.
Second, social media accounts falsely claim or suggest that the acting was done by people pretending to be Ukrainian war victims, even though the footage actually has nothing to do with the...
Russian military command has been lying for the fifth month in a row about battlefield “successes,” claiming that Russian forces are advancing west of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region. However, this...