StopFake located the video being circulated in Russian media claiming to show children being sent to the front. The video turned out to be of an adult Ukrainian National guard serviceman.
Pro-Kremlin media and Russian social media users are spreading disinformation claiming that Ukrainian authorities are sending children to the war zone. A video showing a young man in military uniform, working in a mortar crew is provided as evidence of the claim.
“In the video, the boys are in full gear, they look 14-15 years old at the most. They load, aim mortars and even fire them,” Rossiyskaya Gazeta writes.
These disinformation claims turned out to be yet another piece of fiction. StopFake storyboarded the video, and with the help of a Google image search, we were able to locate it on the TikTok platform under the user “sssss__uk__”. The profile content consists of a video of the same young man as in the videos distributed by Russian media.
We contacted the user and asked to confirm if he is indeed depicted in the videos in the Russian media stories, and asked if he is of legal age. In the correspondence, the man whose name is Serhiy, said that he served in the Ukrainian National Guard, and was almost 20 years old. The National Guardsman showed StopFake his military identification containing his photograph and date of birth – May 27, 2003 (his surname, as well as personal data are not published for security reasons – ed.). The serviceman, while young, is of legal age and is far from a child.
Earlier, StopFake debunked Russian fakes claiming that Ukraine would allegedly “send schoolchildren and students to the front.“
