A VideoNews of a massive explosion lighting up the city skyline is spreading on social media, along with claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been killed in a Russian airstrike.
The explosion is real, only it has nothing to do with Ukraine.
VerySocialmediaThe Post alleged that Zelensky was killed in a Russian airstrike over the weekend.
DW Fact Check took a closer look at this recent murder claim and found that this rumor was quickly debunked during investigation.
Fake claim of murder is going viral
Claim: “Reports claim that a Russian airstrike targeted a secure location in Ukraine, reportedly killing President Volodymyr Zelensky. Ukrainian media are reportedly covering the incident, although official confirmation is still pending,” one reads. Poston June 20 with 2.7 million views.
DW Fact Check: false
Zelensky posted a Video on their official X account On Tuesday he was shown meeting with Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Secretary General Mathias Cormann.
The official OECD
Other details in the claim are also not valid. Attached to the post, and other similar ones in
A reverse image search quickly reveals that the video is of the famous 2015 Tianjin warehouse explosion that killed 173 people, and not the air strikes in Ukraine.
The post also claims that Ukrainian media is covering up the incident. This is not true. A scan of the country’s major news sites, including The Kyiv Post, Kyiv Independent, Ukrainska Pravda and the UNIAN news agency, found nothing.
Death rumors targeting politicians are a common means of disinformation
This is not the first time rumors have spread about Zelensky’s death. Earlier this month, a almost identical claim It was spread that the President had been killed in a Russian airstrike – both claims posted from the same account.
And in 2022, there was a pro-Russian information campaign According to Mandiant, an American cyber security firm and Google subsidiary, it is being claimed that Zelensky had committed suicide.
It’s not just Zelensky. Many social media users were convinced that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was assassinated in March, even though he made public appearances to try to dispel the rumors directly.
“Since Maduro was captured by the US earlier this year, we have seen an increase in AI-generated content on social media platforms like X and TikTok claiming that the leader has been captured, arrested or killed,” Pablo Maristani de las Casas, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in Germany and an expert on pro-Russian disinformation, told DW.
“This is a development that is particularly driven by generative AI, where AI tools make these unrealistic scenarios practical for the consumer,” he said.
Signs of a coordinated bot campaign
The accounts spreading this news reveal several suspicious features that suggest a network of bots.
There are at least 30 posts with almost identical words, all sharing the same video. About half of them use the phrase “Russian airstrikes” in the same way, in capital letters. Repeats exactly the same typo, using both a period and an exclamation point, in at least 12 sentences, “Zelensky is dead!”
Then there are the accounts themselves.
Account names include “Russian Army,” “China HD,” “US News” and “Israel Defense” whose avatars are flags. They specifically post so-called breaking news updates and polls, which are designed to increase engagement.
“These claims are shared by what appear to be bot accounts on X that have the aesthetic of being aligned with a particular state or the military of a particular state,” Maristani de las Casas said.
It is common to see an increase in disinformation following real-world events.
This most recent rumor spread the day after Ukraine destroyed an oil depot in Crimea following attacks on Russia. Earlier in June, a similar rumor had come when Zelensky had written an open letter to Putin asking to meet face to face.
These types of posts “can generate emotional responses in audiences that can be quite a powerful medium for actors seeking to spread this information and manipulate the online information environment,” Maristani de las Casas said.
Edited by: Rena Breuer, Sarah Stephan