Berlin: A demonstrably made-up story of British military officers being “captured” during a Russian raid in Ukraine has spread online this week, even being repeated by former British lawmakers. DW takes a look.
According to Deutsche Welle, the AI-generated images resemble cheap cartoons, the floating passport covers are illegible, and there is no evidence that their alleged holders even exist. Nevertheless, an entirely fabricated story of three British military officers being “captured” in a Russian raid on a Ukrainian naval base has spread online in the past week – even being shared by two former British members of parliament and gaining traction from Norway to Pakistan.
A story appeared in Russian media last week that three British military officers – supposedly two colonels in the British Army and an officer from British military intelligence (MI6) – were captured in a Russian raid on a Ukrainian naval base in the small southern city of Ochakiv, known in Russian as Ochakov. One of the most prominent social media posts regurgitating the story has accrued almost 500,000 views on X (formerly Twitter), another has almost 400,000, and another has over 222,000.
The “colonels” were named as “psychological ops specialist Edward Blake” and “Richard Carroll – a Ministry of Defence official with Middle East experience” who were captured during a “lightning-fast” nighttime raid by elite spetsnaz (special forces) troops in an operation codenamed “Skat-12.” A spectacular military and diplomatic coup were it true – which it’s not; it’s completely made up.
As Craig Langford from the specialist UK Defence Journal (UKDJ) analyzed, there is no trace of “Edward Blake” or “Richard Carroll” in any recent British Armed Forces or Ministry of Defence (MoD) records. “In short, there is no proof these individuals exist, let alone that they were captured,” wrote Langford. A spokesman for the MoD refused to even acknowledge the story when asked by DW.
Furthermore, four different images used to illustrate the story across various media outlets and social media channels don’t only depict six different men (who don’t exist); they have also demonstrably been generated using artificial intelligence. The AI image detection tool SightEngine puts the probability of the four images being AI-generated at between 91% and 99%, but obvious visual errors suffice: cartoonish faces, oversize limbs, upside-down rifles, illegible passport covers, gibberish documents, and an officer’s cap missing its peak.
“The uniforms worn by the kneeling men also reveal the image as a fake,” explained Langford for the UKDJ, referring to one of the main images at the top of this article, which appeared in some of the fake reporting. “While the camouflage superficially resembles British Army patterns, the details are wrong. Military clothing follows strict patterns and standards, especially in operational environments, and these deviations suggest that the uniforms were generated based on visual approximations rather than real references.”