Russian sources claim that the news about the Ukrainian military capturing the first North Korean fighter is a fake, as the photo with him was allegedly distributed online on February 24, 2022. As proof of this, propagandists cite a screenshot of a reverse image search from Google, which indeed indicates that the photo was published on Reddit in the UkraineWarVideoReport community on the first day of the full-scale war.

However, this screenshot is disinformation, writes the StopFake project.

Yonhap news agency, citing South Korean intelligence, reported on December 27, 2024 that on December 26, the Ukrainian Armed Forces captured the first North Korean soldier in the Kursk region of Russia. However, the very next day, the soldier died from complications after being wounded. In the same days, photos of this prisoner of war began to circulate on the Internet.

In turn, the screenshot from Google Images that Russian propagandists are spreading is either edited or an example of a typical Google search technical glitch that occurs when searching for posts on Reddit. This issue has been discussed repeatedly on Reddit - a number of posts have been dedicated to it, but it is still unknown what exactly causes this glitch.

Moreover, the propagandists published a screenshot not of the publication itself, where the date is clearly visible, but of the result of a Google search query.

February 24, 2022 is the date of the creation of the UkraineWarVideoReport community on Reddit: it is a pro-Ukrainian resource where English-speaking users share information and materials about the Russian-Ukrainian war. The photo of the first captured fighter from North Korea was indeed published here, not two years ago, but on December 27, 2024.

We previously wrote about how Russia is hiding losses among the North Korean military.