On Friday, news emerged that there was a mutiny in the 37th Motorized Brigade of the Russian Army, during which its commander, Colonel Yuri Medvedev, was seriously injured. According to that information, unnamed soldiers from that unit attacked him with a tank, blaming him for the death of his comrades during the fighting near Makariv.
Initially, it was one of countless unconfirmed news about the war in Ukraine, which flooded the media and social networks. The video shows the injured colonel being taken to the hospital, and it was first posted on social media by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, without explaining how the injuries occurred. Ukrainian journalist Roman Cymbayluk then stated on his Facebook account that Medvedev was attacked by soldiers from his unit.
The official Russian media kept quiet about this incident, and on pro-Russian portals it was presented as Ukrainian propaganda. However, after another confirmation from a source from the "intelligence community", the Washington Post published this story, and during the evening it was carried by many world media.
In the absence of independent sources
Most media houses insist that certain news or the authenticity of a video, especially in the complicated circumstances of war, be confirmed by independent sources before publication. But what to do if independent sources cannot be found and the news is potentially of great importance? A special problem is video recordings, which, with the use of basic and accessible tools, are very easy to manipulate. However, a surprising amount of authentication of social media videos can be achieved with fairly simple checks.
A good example of that process is the investigation of the authenticity of the video clip that was obtained by CNN at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. In the video, Russian army helicopters were seen flying, and one of them was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Ukrainian authorities claimed that it happened in the immediate vicinity of Kiev, a few kilometers from Hostomel airport. But, at that moment, no one guessed that Russian troops had already penetrated so deep into Ukrainian territory.
Check the weather conditions.
According to Kathy Polglaze, a member of CNN's research team, a simple search first determined that it was not content that had already been posted on the Internet before.
Then it was necessary to determine when, and after that through the process of geolocation, and in which location the recording was made. The weather conditions seen in the video were compared with those of the day's weather reports from sites like Wilfram Alpha or CNN Weather. Then we moved on to the analysis of visual traces from the clip itself: characteristic objects, monuments, churches or parts of the landscape were compared with images of the same landscape downloaded from Google Earth.
The aforementioned video successfully passed all tests and CNN managed to send a team to the scene, which was the only one to record the attack of the Russian army on the strategically important Hostomel airport.
Cross-reference of sources
A similar analysis was applied in the Washington Post, and this crossing of multiple sources led to one unverified piece of information becoming a very important piece of news that revealed the true state of the Russian invasion army in Ukraine.
Of course, all interested parties in the barbaric aggression against Ukraine filter the news, sometimes they adjust it more or less, and often they lie directly and knowingly. But not everyone lies equally and with the same motives. That's why no one would think to equate, for example, the Ukrainian release of exaggerated information about the amount of destroyed Russian military equipment and weapons, with the shameless statement of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov that "the Russian army does not target civilian targets..."
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