article

Six checks before you share war video (I do them every time, also for my side)

June 21, 2026 · 2 min read

Contents(7)

Last week in one of my Ukrainian Telegram chats somebody shared a video with caption about a "new" strike. I knew the building. It was from 2022, I verified it myself back then. Forty people had already forwarded it. Nobody was lying on purpose, they were just angry and fast.

So here are the six checks I do, every time, in this order. Takes 5-15 minutes. If you do not have 5 minutes, you do not have time to share it either.

1. Who posted it first?

Not who sent it to you. Who uploaded it first. Search the caption text, search the account. A "witness" account created three days ago with one viral video is not a witness, it is a campaign.

2. Reverse search the keyframes

Video cannot be reverse searched directly, frames can. The InVID-WeVerify browser plugin extracts keyframes and sends them to several reverse image engines in one click. Free, made for journalists, works for everyone.

3. Weather and season

Snow in a video captioned "today" in July. Green trees in "this morning" in February. Sounds stupid, catches a lot.

4. Sound and text

Which language do people speak? Which accent? What is written on signs, cars, shops? Ukrainian and Russian look similar to outsiders but they are not same alphabet.

5. Geolocate

If the caption says a city, find the place (see my geolocation post in Hack The Planet). If you cannot find it, label it unconfirmed, not "true".

6. Does it make you feel very strongly?

Then wait one hour. Seriously. Content made to manipulate is made to make you angry or happy right now. One hour kills most of the urge.

About my side

The most common fake I see from pro-Ukrainian accounts is video game footage. Arma 3 clips of "air defence" or "a jet shot down" circulate every few months, it happens so often that the game developer, Bohemia Interactive, published a statement about it. Our side sharing fakes hurts our side. Every fake we share is a gift to people who say everything from Ukraine is propaganda.

What I do not know: how many of these fakes are organised and how many are just people. My guess is mostly people. That is opinion, not data.

#osint #war #geopolitics #security

Written by

Marta Kovalenko

Backend dev (Python, Postgres) and OSINT hobbyist. From Zaporizhzhia, in Kraków since March 2022. Geolocation, satellite imagery, verifying before sharing. Post a claim without a source in my topic and I will ask for one. Слава Україні.

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Comments

Bartek Wójcik@bartek_gamedev5 rep in Wars, Votes and Wires4mo ago

Arma 3 point is so true. My uncle sent me "Ukrainian air defence" video, it was literally the game, with HUD visible in corner. He is 64, he still does not believe me

Marta Kovalenko@marta_osint#2 in Wars, Votes and Wires4mo ago

Show him Bohemia statement. Older people trust video more than text, this is the problem, video "cannot lie" for them

Bartek Wójcik@bartek_gamedev5 rep in Wars, Votes and Wires4mo ago

showed him. he said "maybe the game copied the real video". I give up, k***a

Freya Collins@freya_bristol2 rep in Wars, Votes and Wires4mo ago

The "wait one hour if it makes you angry" rule should be printed on every phone. tbh it works for climate stuff too, there's plenty of rubbish on both sides there.

Rafiul Islam@rafi_dhaka#5 in Wars, Votes and Wires4mo ago

In July 2024 we had the opposite problem. No internet, so rumours spread by phone call and SMS with zero way to check anything. When the net came back, five days of rumours hit at once. Verification needs connectivity, people forget that.

Marta Kovalenko@marta_osint#2 in Wars, Votes and Wires4mo ago

Very true. Shutdown is also a misinformation machine. Would you write about it here one day? I think many people outside do not know what happened

Rafiul Islam@rafi_dhaka#5 in Wars, Votes and Wires4mo ago

Maybe on the anniversary. It is still hard to write actually.

Oleksii Bondarenko@oleksii_kyiv#9 in Wars, Votes and Wires4mo ago

I do check 3 automatically now. "Kyiv today" with snow, posted in June)))

Nadia Benali@nullbyte_nadia2 rep in Wars, Votes and Wires4mo ago

InVID-WeVerify is great. Same instinct as phishing triage: look at the sender before the content. Account age, previous posts, sudden topic change. Voilà.

Giulia Bellandi@giulia_designs2 rep in Wars, Votes and Wires4mo ago

Sending this to my family WhatsApp group!! They share everything 🤌 my zia shared a "new" video last week that was from 2019 ahah

Guillaume Mercier@guillaume_rale1 rep in Wars, Votes and Wires4mo ago

Bon. This should be taught in school. In France half my family shares things from WhatsApp groups without opening them, and the other half shares them after opening them, which is worse.