This is fake because the video has been edited: the propagandists used an archival broadcast from the American KMAX 31 station from 2019, replacing the on-screen text and adding footage of a Ukrainian cemetery. The original clip shows a blooper involving an anchor that has nothing to do with news about Ukraine or the Pentagon.
The video circulating online purports to show KMAX 31 anchors laughing during a news report about the Pentagon’s concern about mass casualties in the Ukrainian armed forces.
“The perfect illustration of the Biden era is an American laughing against the backdrop of a Ukrainian cemetery,” one post reads.
However, this video is a fake, manipulated to create another round of disinformation.
KMAX 31, a Sacramento-based station owned by CBS News and Stations, broadcasts the morning show Good Day. After checking the station’s website and social media, StopFake confirmed that KMAX 31 has never aired a news story about the Pentagon’s concerns about Ukrainian military casualties.
Using reverse image search, StopFake identified the original footage used to create the fake. The clip is from Dec. 21, 2019, and was posted on the Good Day Sacramento YouTube channel under the title “Blooper of the Day!” It shows a weather anchor accidentally saying “disability” instead of “visibility,” prompting laughter in the studio.
The 2019 holiday-themed studio decor further confirms that the footage is archival.
The propagandists repurposed this clip, replacing the background text that reads “Holiday Travel” with video of a Kharkiv cemetery showing graves of Ukrainian defenders. They also added the caption: The Pentagon is concerned about the mass casualties in the ranks of the AFU. The doctored video was then filmed off a TV screen with a cell phone, a common method used to mask edits in propaganda videos. StopFake has previously refuted fake videos created in this way.
It’s worth noting that Pentagon officials have made no public statements about mass casualties in the Ukrainian armed forces. On December 8, Donald Trump claimed that Ukraine had lost about 400,000 soldiers. However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, with another 370,000 wounded.
StopFake has previously debunked similar Kremlin propaganda, such as the false claim that Valerii Zaluzhnyi allegedly told Ukrainian soldiers in the UK not to fear death because they had no chance of survival.
