Event background
Recently, Russia's weapons have been depleted, and there have been endless news that Putin is seeking to buy weapons around the world. The "News Forensic Team" has collected the three most widely circulated messages as the goal to check the authenticity for you.
Target News 1
A post on foreign social media Tweets said that "Russian President Vladimir Putin visits North Korea to buy rockets and ammunition," along with a photo of Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Verification process
Did Putin go to North Korea? Is his photo with Kim Jong-un real?
Searching for recent news reports, Mr. Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin interacted around the day of the liberation of north Korea's homeland. On August 16, 2022, the BBC published an article entitled "Putin Kim Jong-un Mutual Letter, Keywords: Comradely Friendship Advanced Weapons Ukraine". The picture used in this report is a group photo of Putin and Kim Jong-un, so did Kim Jong-un really meet with Putin?
We looked more closely and found that there is a small line below the BBC picture, Kim Jong-un and Putin met in Vladivostok in 2019, and the text uses an old picture.
So where does this picture in the target news come from? We searched for a report by the Russian Satellite News Agency on April 26, 2019, entitled "Main Statements and Behind-the-Scenes Footage Of the Best Moments of the Meeting between Putin and Kim Jong-un." It also comes with a picture, and this picture is consistent with the post. From this, it is concluded that an old image is also used in the post.
So where was Putin on August 16, 2022? We retrieved a Xinhua news agency's August 17 press release showing that Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a national security conference in Moscow that day, which confirmed that Putin had not visited North Korea.
Has Russia ever bought rockets and missiles from North Korea?
Open the link attached to the post and peruse the full text of "Putin Visits North Korea to Buy Rockets and Ammunition." In the main text of the report, "Putin is visiting Iran and hopes to buy North Korean artillery and ammunition for the Russian army", there is a clear discrepancy between the title and the main text. Buying North Korean weapons from Iran does not make logical sense. There is also no trace of North Korea's arms sales to Russia in the official release. Is it necessary for Putin to buy rockets and ammunition from North Korea?
Bai Mengchen: Now for Russia, the problem it has found in special military operations is not that there is no ammunition, but that there is no ammunition with a high degree of information and can carry out precision strikes. Then of course I think for Russia, the traditional ammunition it has is in stock, then what he wants now is something that the North Koreans can't provide.
The result of the verification: "Russian President Putin visited North Korea to buy rockets and ammunition" is false news.
Target News 2
A number of netizens posted on social media that Russia wanted to buy 1,000 drones from Iran, and the posts were accompanied by a photo, and multiple drones appeared in the photos.
Verification process
On April 11, the Ukrainian Army Intelligence Service released a video in which Ukrainian soldiers, after splitting a captured Russian SeaHawk-10 unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, found an entire camera loaded inside the aircraft for filming. Meanwhile, Ukrainian military personnel found that the drone lacked key components in another SeaHawk-10 drone captured, and a simple plastic water bottle was used to act as a fuel tank. This reflects from the side that Russian drones do have flaws.
Bai Mengchen: The Performance of Russian UAVs in this special military operation is really not very good, and it has not even come up with too many UAVs that can make the outside world feel that they have the ability to detect and fight and have the ability to have long-term flight times. In fact, in this field in recent years, the performance of drones is still good, and it has a number of military drone models and production capacity.
If Russia buys drones from Iran, there are possibilities from both the technical level and the channel level. But our target news mentioned a number, that is, 1,000 drones, is it really possible for Russia to order or buy 1,000 drones from Iran? Where exactly is this information coming from?
The original publisher of the online post was named Elijah Maniye. The original post was titled "Russia Buys 1,000 Drones from Iran, Expands Levels of Strategic Cooperation." Released on August 13, 2022, three weeks after Putin's visit to Iran.
Who is Elijah Maniye? Is the content of his article credible? Are there any other clues that can prove the truth of this?
Elijah Maniye is a veteran war correspondent and political risk analyst with 37 years of reporting experience living in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Syria. The identity of the reporter is real and verifiable, so is it credible that Elijah Maniye wrote that "Russia and Iran signed an agreement on the purchase of drones"?
After the collection of information on the whole network and public reports on the agreement signed by Russia and Iran, the latest report came from Reuters on July 19, which was a preliminary agreement on energy cooperation between Iran and Russia, and there was no drone order agreement this year.
Bai Mengchen: The number of 1,000 is actually very questionable, and what Russia needs is a large, long-term military drone, and it is difficult to buy 1,000. Although the drone is a small plane in the sky, it has a ground station behind it, and a series of maintenance related equipment, and the ground part is not necessarily smaller than the manned aircraft. And its maintenance guarantee, the entire training process is also very complicated. For Russia, in a short period of time, even with simulation training equipment, it is difficult to master a cluster such as dozens of such a cluster. The number of 1,000 aircraft could be introduced by Russia in a few years or even a decade, and it would be able to really play combat capabilities. Instead of simply signing 1,000 aircraft, it seems that tomorrow 1,000 will go to the battlefield, which is impossible and does not conform to a real form of drone warfare.
The result of the verification: "Russia wants to buy 1,000 drones from Iran", the news is doubtful.
Target News 3
There was a recent post on the Internet that read, "The Russian military accidentally exposed plastic missiles to cause controversy," accompanied by a 15-second video.
Verification process
What exactly is this object in the picture? Is the video of the soldier's interview really from a news report by the Russian military?
A watermark icon appears in the video with the text JPTLY. The icon type was searched and no identical results were found. However, in the social media platform, we accidentally found a video posted by an RT icon account with the words icon that closely resembled JPTLY. We compare the two icons and we can see that the two icons are highly consistent. Seeing this, it can be determined that the letters IN the target post video, RUPTLY, have obviously been enlarged, and the uppercase letter R and part of the letter U on the left side of the original watermark icon RUPTLY have been cut, resulting in the icon appearing to be JPTLY now.
RUPTLY is a subsidiary of russia's well-known media today Russia RT. We searched the site and found a video title posted on June 7, 2018, titled "Russian S-400 Anti-Missile System Exercise Held in Crimea." The video has been deleted and is now unavailable, but this story has been compiled and reprinted by other media.
In the reprint of the Iranian Youth Journalists Club News Agency, the 1 minute and 52 seconds of the video was found, and from the 31 seconds of the video, there was a content screen that was exactly the same as the 15-second plastic missile video transmitted online.
So far, the target news video has been confirmed to be from a Military Exercise conducted by Russia in the Crimea region in June 2018, not during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. But the final link in the verification is still missing, the most critical doubt, what is the object that resembles the S-400 missile launcher?
We found the answer in a report published by Red Star TELEVISION, a media affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Defense, titled "Battlefield Hoax, Scenes of S-400 Secretly Changing Positions." "During the massive exercises held in Crimea, anti-aircraft missiles and artillery systems repelled a simulated enemy missile attack at sea," the report reads. The combatants then practiced rapidly changing positions and deployed inflatable false targets in their original positions. ”
Verification result: There is no plastic Wind Drift missile S-400, but an inflatable fake target used in military exercises, which is a tactical means used in modern warfare to camouflage and confuse opponents. The text prompt information in the target news video is false.
Editor of this issue: Yang Xinye
Text Editor: Yu Erya