Another Russian fake about the Ukrainian “Flamingo” missile has been debunked
A video is being actively circulated on social media that allegedly “exposes” the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine for using computer graphics, footage from old World War II films, and recordings of U.S. Tomahawk launches instead of real footage of the Ukrainian FP-5 “Flamingo” cruise missile.
Analysts from the VoxCheck project drew attention to this.
In reality, this is deliberate disinformation. Neither the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine nor the missile’s developer, Fire Point, has ever published any such video presentation.
The fake was created by propagandists themselves: they took a real video by The Wall Street Journal about the characteristics of the “Flamingo”, changed the color scheme from orange to blue, added footage from other sources, and generated the narrator’s voice using artificial intelligence.
Fact check:
- There is no such video on the official resources of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (website, Facebook).
- Fire Point does not have a website or social media pages, so publishing a video on its behalf is impossible.
- A reverse image search of the frames via Google Lens immediately points to the original material by The Wall Street Journal.
Frame comparison:
According to the authors of the VoxCheck report, the audio in the fake video shows clear signs of AI generation: a monotonous, robotic voice, numerous grammatical mistakes, and phrases atypical for a native Ukrainian speaker (“velyko dalnosti” instead of “velykoi dalnosti”, “novoho pokolynna” instead of “novoho pokolinnia”, etc.). Analysis using the Hive Moderation service confirmed a high probability that the voice was synthesized.
Thus, instead of “exposing a fake”, the propagandists themselves created a fake in order to discredit Ukrainian weapons developments.
For three years now, Russian propaganda has been repeating the message: “Ukraine is poor, incapable, everything has been stolen”. When evidence to the contrary appears – new missiles, drones, electronic warfare systems – It destroys this narrative. That is why they have to shout “fake!” and produce so-called “exposés”, so their own audience does not start asking uncomfortable questions. While Ukrainian missiles (“Neptune”, RK-360MC, and now “Flamingo”) are in fact sinking Russian ships and striking Crimea and oil refineries, it is psychologically easier for Russians to convince themselves and their audience that “none of this really exists”, that it is all just “cartoons”.