The website for Zvezda, the television channel of the Russian Defense Ministry, incorrectly reported a news item entitled “American Military Machinery Fires at the Outskirts of Mariupol.” It was accompanied by a photograph of an American Abrams M1A2 tank with the Trident, the Ukrainian national symbol, painted on the hull of the tank. The story relayed that “an intelligence service team commander, cover name ‘Hindu,’ told about the new mysterious tank of the Ukrainian army under the codename “The Black Panther.”
The photo was in fact lifted off the official site of the U.S. Army and taken during military maneuvers in Texas in 2013. The original photo, of course, is without the Trident symbol on the tank.
