For at least the third time in a few weeks, the separatist camp released falsified images suggesting that Ukrainian regular forces were launching a major offensive against the self-proclaimed Eastern Republics.
A tactic called a “false flag” attack that could serve as a pretext for a Russian offensive and which the United States has repeatedly warned against.
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This is according to an analysis published by Eliot Higgins on Twitter on Sunday.
The founder and director of the investigation website Bellingcat is not on his first investigation.
In November 2020, the media revealed the identity of the spies who organized the poisoning of Alexei Navalny.
This time it highlights the staging orchestrated by Moscow to justify an invasion of Ukraine.
In question, a video broadcast on February 18 on the Telegram channel of the press service of the People's Republic of Donetsk, one of the two pro-Russian territories of the country.
The images broadcast in this one-minute-twenty-five video are of poor quality, but we can imagine a long exchange of gunshots and detonations in a dimly lit forest.
At 1'06, a male voice is distinguished.
For context, the separatist press service explains that this is a video revealing an operation organized by "
Polish-speaking saboteurs
" who planned to "
blow up a chlorine tank on the territory of a sewage treatment plant near the town of Gorlovga
”.
The video would have been found on the bodies of the saboteurs, we are assured.
A "proof" strong enough to justify a "counter-offensive" supported by the Russian army in Ukraine?
Not really.
Quickly, online investigators alerted to the inconsistencies of this video and the message relayed by the People's Republic of Donetsk.
Several elements support this analysis, thanks to the study of the metadata of the video easily accessible on Telegram.
A similar video on Youtube
The Russian media Lentach notably analyzed the dates of the creation of the video and that of the folder in which it was placed.
This information community created by two Russian journalists and known for its sarcastic coverage of the news highlights a disturbing first aspect.
While the video was released on Telegram on February 18, Lentach claims that its creation is from February 8 and that of the folder it was located in is from February 4.
A temporal inconsistency which already alerts to the possibility of a staging.
More specifically, Lentach reveals that the broadcast video was in the "
Pantry
" section, along with another file named "
M72A5 LAW and AIPLAS live fire.mp4
".
This detail is important: the section is the one that, on Adobe's video editing software, allows you to group several audio or video sources on a media.
Concretely, therefore, the video circulating on Telegram seems to be the result of an assembly of several media, and is therefore not an authentic video.
To go further, the investigative media searched on YouTube if videos were named "
M72A5 LAW and AIPLAS live fire.mp4
".
Lentach then discovered a video showing a military firing range in Finland with several sounds of detonations and explosions.
By analyzing the sound of the latter, August Graham, English journalist at PA Media, discovered a concomitance between the video of the "
Polish saboteur
" and that of the military firing range in Finland.
He explains in particular that certain audio waveforms, during the explosions at 1'51 of the Youtube video, are very close to that heard on the video broadcast on Telegram.
He also notes that the video of the "
Polish saboteur
" stops precisely when, in the Youtube video, the soldiers react verbally to the explosion.
Third tampered video
In a second analysis of the audio from the two videos, sound designer Ciran Walsh compares the sound of the explosions in detail.
“
The synchronization is perfect,
he explains on Twitter.
I have highlighted some distinctive features which are identical, many others are visible.
There is no doubt, the sound of the explosions is identical
”.
In summary, it seems that the press service of the Donetsk People's Republic has modified an already existing video on Youtube into a media outlet accusing Ukraine of aggression.
This is not the first time that pro-Russian separatists have been singled out for altering videos meant to alarm civilians.
Already on February 18, the head of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk broadcast a video on Telegram announcing the evacuation of civilians to Russia, due to an "
increase in the number of Ukrainian soldiers and weapons
" observed along the contact line.
Shortly after, a similar message was shared by the leader of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic (LPR), Leonid Pasechnik.
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But, by investigating the metadata of these two videos in the same way using an online metadata viewer, Bellingcat managed to access the creation date of the videos.
It appears that these media were created on February 16, i.e. two days before their broadcast but especially two days before the bombings denounced.
One more clue that establishes that Russia has been staging an alleged aggressiveness in the Ukrainian camp for several days, to justify an attack.
The disclosures of the recording dates as well as the probable video montage of the "
Polish saboteur
" reinforce the thesis put forward by the United States for several days.
According to them, this "
banner attack
" would make it possible to use a pretext to invade Ukraine.
At the beginning of February, Washington was already accusing Moscow of creating from scratch the images of a false Ukrainian attack against Russia.
This allegation continues to grow stronger as the escalation of tensions progresses.