The day after U.S. officials said Ukraine could use U.S. weapons in limited attacks inside Russia, a deepfake video appeared on the internet of a U.S. spokesperson discussing the policy.
The fabricated video, created from actual footage, shows State Department spokesman Matthew Miller appearing to suggest that the Russian city of Belgorod, just 25 miles north of the Ukraine-Russia border, would be a legitimate target for such an attack.
The 49-second video clip, which feels authentic despite obvious signs of manipulation, illustrates the growing threat of disinformation, particularly so-called deepfake videos that use artificial intelligence.
U.S. officials said they had no knowledge of the video's origins, but they were particularly concerned that Russia could use such techniques to manipulate public opinion around the war in Ukraine and U.S. political debate.
“There are essentially no civilians left in Belgorod,” the video quoted Miller as saying at the State Department in response to a reporter's question (also fabricated), “and it's pretty much full to capacity at this point with military targets, and the same is beginning to happen in the surrounding areas.”
“We need to send a message to Russia that this is unacceptable,” Miller added in the video, which was widely shared on Telegram channels followed by Belgorod residents and drew a response from Russian government officials.
Everything stated in the video about Belgorod is completely false: the city has been targeted in Ukrainian attacks, its schools are online, and its 340,000 residents have not been evacuated.
The false claims that civilians are fleeing and that the city is a primarily military area may suggest that Western countries are willing to support indiscriminate attacks in the city, but this is not the case.
President Biden has given Ukraine limited authorization to use U.S.-made weapons in self-defense strikes inside Russia, officials said. The policy shift comes as Russia has deployed missiles, glide bombs and artillery shells just inside Ukraine's border that it has used to attack the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and surrounding areas.
The video also shows Miller appearing to respond to the reporter's (also manipulated) claim that other countries “allow Russia to fire its weapons deep into Russian territory,” which is not accurate, although some Western leaders have said their weapons could be used to attack targets on Russia's border that threaten Ukraine.
“So we'll support our allies in whatever decision they make and we'll help those who are maybe on the fence about this to make the right choice,” Miller is forced to say.
Miller, who was visiting Moldova and the Czech Republic this week with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, condemned the video in a statement.
“The Kremlin has adopted the spreading of disinformation as a core strategy for misleading people both in Russia and abroad,” he said. “I can think of no more compelling sign that its decisions are going wrong than when it has to resort to outright disinformation to defend its decisions to its own people, let alone the world.”
Several Russian media outlets and websites mentioned and distributed the video, but did not mention that the lip-syncing was wrong or that Miller's shirt and tie had changed color midway through the video.
Coincidentally, countering Russian disinformation was a central theme of Blinken's recent trips to both Moldova and the Czech Republic, where he spoke publicly about similar attacks launched in European countries by pro-Russian propagandists, who often use networks on social media platforms that include fake accounts to spread lies.
At a meeting in Prague on Friday, Blinken and representatives from NATO member states discussed how to counter Russian disinformation and other “hybrid attacks” aimed at undermining governance and democratic institutions in the United States and its European allies.
“I can tell you in my conversations today that virtually all of our allies have been shocked by Russia's escalation of hybrid attacks,” Blinken said at a press conference Friday afternoon. “We know what they are trying to do, and we will respond, individually and collectively, as necessary.”
The trip's first stop was in Chisinau, Moldova, where U.S. officials and other international counterparts discussed online propaganda aimed at promoting Moldova's European Union membership and undermining President Maia Sandu, who is up for re-election in October.
Blinken and Czech Republic Foreign Minister Jan Lipavski signed a memorandum of understanding in Prague on Thursday to counter “foreign information operations,” according to the State Department.
Also accompanying him on the trip was James P. Rubin, who served in Miller's position in the Clinton administration and is now special envoy for countering disinformation and coordinator of the State Department's Global Engagement Center.
Miller's false statements were repeated verbatim on the Telegram channel of the Russian Human Rights Council, a state body that nominally advises President Vladimir V. Putin. The council's account then shared an angry response from its chairman, Valery Faddeev.
“Washington deliberately does not want to draw attention to Kiev's obvious crimes against humanity,” Fadeev wrote. “We do not particularly expect this information to be conveyed to skeptics by the State Department, but the truth is ours anyway.”
In a post accusing Miller of “lies,” Fadeev suggested the U.S. does not understand the danger to civilians in Belgorod. He said at least 175 civilians have been killed and another 800 injured in the Belgorod region since February 2022.
Russian state news agency TASS published a story based on Fadeev's remarks on Thursday. As of Friday evening, the Human Rights Council had not issued a statement on its Telegram channel acknowledging that the video was fake.
The Insider, an independent Russian media outlet with a section dedicated to combating fake news, noted that the video was also available on VK, a Russian social network now controlled by businessmen close to Putin, as well as on another website run by pro-war propagandist Alexander Kots.
Life in Belgorod is far from normal. Schools are only online and air raid sirens are sounding frequently. Explosions are heard frequently, buildings are damaged and civilians are killed. A series of explosions on December 30, 2023, which Moscow blamed on Ukraine, killed 25 people and injured at least 100. The explosions came a day after Russian airstrikes on cities across Ukraine killed 57 people and injured 160.
Some areas near the border have been evacuated, and many small towns and villages within the border are regularly subjected to drone and artillery fire from Ukraine. In late April, Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that Ukrainian attacks had killed at least 120 civilians, including 11 children. He also said that an additional 651 people had been wounded since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Julian E. Barnes He contributed reporting from Washington.
