To promote disinformation, Russian propagandists used a bot account on Facebook and AI-generated images of a child.
Russian media and other Kremlin propaganda channels have been spreading a Facebook post allegedly written by a Ukrainian soldier who apologizes for the “murder” of a minor in Sudzha, Kursk region, Russia, supposedly carried out by his comrades. The post is accompanied by what appears to be a photo of the child.
This is fake. The image of the child was AI-generated. According to the Hive Moderation fake detection program, the picture promoted by Russian propagandists has an 87.9% probability of being AI-generated.
The account of the so-called “soldier” who allegedly apologized to Russians is also fake. The profile was created in January 2025, and since then, only three posts have appeared on the page — two of them just five days ago. It is impossible to verify the identity of the account owner since the only profile picture features a group of 13 people in military uniforms.
The account states that its owner is from Zhytomyr, but it also claims they studied at Escuela Parroquial Padre Arturo, a school in the Dominican Republic. This inconsistency suggests that the account belongs to a bot created for a Russian disinformation campaign against Ukraine.
Russian propaganda continues to spread false stories about the supposed “atrocities” of the Ukrainian army in the Kursk region. These efforts aim to discredit the Ukrainian military and justify Russia’s war crimes against Ukrainian civilians.
Earlier, Ukrinform reported that Russian propagandists, using a “Finnish journalist,” spread another fake news story about alleged Ukrainian war crimes in Sudzha.
Andriy Olenin
