The National Security and Defense Council's Center for Countering Disinformation has recorded a significant increase in the scale of Russian disinformation, in which propagandists promote false messages about the alleged deliberate killing of civilian Ukrainian soldiers. In particular, they are actively distributing an unverified drone video, using it to support their claims. This video does not contain specific information about the direction of the shelling, the circumstances of the events, or the identity of the participants, which makes these claims dubious.

The purpose of such disinformation is to create a false image of Russian military personnel as “defenders” of the civilian population of the temporarily occupied territories and to divert attention from the real war crimes recorded there. Russia is trying to justify its aggression by using these information leaks to discredit the Ukrainian military and strengthen the negative image of Ukraine among the local population and the international community.