A fake is being spread online claiming the alleged capture of 277 soldiers “in the very center of Pokrovsk”. The post is presented as a sensational story, but the information has no confirmation. The post itself does not specify which military personnel are supposedly involved. Official sources and international media have not reported any mass capture on such a scale, VoxCheck reports.

The fake, which appeared in early November, is based on a manipulative publication by the website “Life in Details”, which, without any evidence, refers to a journalist from The Economist. The actual article in The Economist contains no such data. Moreover, the photos used to illustrate the “news” were taken from unrelated events: one image has been circulating since 2022, while another is a frame from a video by the 79th Brigade published as far back as January 4, 2025.

Similar anonymous pages quite often spread distorted or false information in order to boost their reach. Disinformation mechanisms are also used in other information attacks – as previously discussed in the case of Russian information-psychological operations (IPSO) farms and a series of TikTok videos in which AI-generated “soldiers” allegedly report the complete encirclement of Kupiansk and a catastrophic situation at the front.