Ukraine, Russia | Autumn made fun of him - here is another Russian blunder

In the same way that the Western media closely covers the war in Ukraine, there is a lot of interest in what is happening in the “special military operation” in many circles in Russia. As a result, an environment of so-called military bloggers arose, a kind of war correspondent.

These run on the Russian messaging service Telegram and bring updates, photos and video from the front line. Some military bloggers are relatively credible, reporting on both Russian successes and failures, while others report exclusively on Russian victories. It just so happens that some of the Russian victories are fabrications.

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air defense system

One lesser known military blogger is one called “Херсонский Вестник”, which roughly translates to “Kherson Messenger”. On Telegram, the channel has around 50,000 followers, while the biggest bloggers have more than 1 million followers, which is pretty good.

On December 15, the user posted a video of what appears to be an attack on a Ukrainian S300 battery. The S300 is an air defense system developed by the Soviet Union, and used by both Russia and Ukraine in the war. In November, a sensation erupted when two Polish men were killed when what was initially thought to be a Russian missile crashed into Poland. Later, Jens Stoltenberg and Joe Biden explain that they believe it was a Ukrainian S300 anti-aircraft missile that crashed in Poland.

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Watch the movie here:

The video was taken by a Swede calling himself Dave Moon on Twitter. He follows the war in Ukraine closely, and is part of an environment that uses what is called OSINT to verify photos, videos, and other information from the battlefield.

OSINT can be translated as open source intelligence, which is to use publicly available information to verify images, videos and other information.

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The video was geolocated in a place called Kostomarove in Kherson region, Ukraine. The video is supposed to be from August, by which time the Russians were in control of the area.

Among the best-known OSINT practitioners is Dutch group Bellingcat, which, using OSINT, was able to prove that it was Russian-backed forces that used a Russian air defense system to shoot down a MH17 in 2014. 298 people were killed, and Russia denied it had anything to do with the shooting. . Two Russians and a Ukrainian were convicted of shooting down the plane by a Dutch court in November this year. Among those convicted was Igor Girkin, who in the aftermath of the shooting established himself as one of Russia’s leading military bloggers. Neither Girkin nor any of the other convicts were arrested.

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– It’s hard to escape

Lars Peder Haga is an associate professor at the Norwegian Air Force School and an expert on Russian air power, military power, doctrine and operations. He watched the video in question, and commented on it as follows:

First and foremost, this shows how difficult it is to get away with cheating in a world where the tools and expertise to assess the credibility of such videos are so widespread. Either the Russians didn’t get it, or they thought it was “good enough” for the local audience. After all, this was much more difficult to detect than the attack on the bridge pillar, Haga wrote in a text message to Nettavisen.

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The Haga bridge pillar referred to has already been mentioned by Nettavisen. In September, the Russian Ministry of Defense released a video it claimed showed a Russian attack on a Ukrainian boat in the Dnipro River. However, the video turns out to be an attack on a bridge pillar that has been standing in the middle of the river since World War II.

Watch the video here:

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