Such a message was circulated on social networks, in particular on telegram channels broadcasting pro-Kremlin rhetoric. The reports say that the military of the 128th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine beat a man with his hands tied with a stick on his back. Like, it was a Brazilian volunteer who tried to escape from the position. A bound man in military uniform asked in Portuguese “not to beat him”. As proof, the authors add a video showing the process of beating an allegedly Brazilian volunteer with the participation of the Ukrainian military. At the same time, the authors of the messages note that the video was found on the phone of one of the prisoners of war of the Ukrainian military. It is not true.

The fact-checkers of the StopFake project drew attention to the case, and they investigated that the video was not real. As analysts explain, this is another production of Russian propaganda because the Brazilians are indeed among the volunteers but do not serve in the 128th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Like other volunteers from other countries, the Brazilians serve only in the Foreign Legion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

In addition, StopFake analysts checked the video using language detection tools. That's how they figured out that the bound man in the video was speaking Portuguese. In Brazil, the official language is Portuguese. However, later the fact-checkers turned to Brazilian colleagues to clarify whether it was possible to determine from the pronunciation of the man in the video that he was Brazilian. They were told that the man was definitely not a native speaker and that he was studying European Portuguese, not Brazilian Portuguese. Actually, European Portuguese is spoken, in particular, in Portugal, and not in Brazil. These two varieties of Portuguese, for example, have a significant difference in phonetics that can be easily heard and recorded.