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The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and state-run media outlets have once again accompanied reports of “successful strikes” against Ukrainian troops in the Kursk Region with old clips filmed in Ukraine, as per a report by the independent investigative outlet Sistema (lit. “System”).
On August 14, the Russian Defense Ministry's Zvezda TV channel aired footage of “defeated hidden AFU strongholds in the Kursk Region.” As per Sistema, the video showed a strike on a building that is actually located in Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast — not Kursk.
A screenshot of a post on Zvezda's official Telegram channel claiming the video showed “defeated hidden AFU strongholds in the Kursk Region”
Google Earth screenshot provided by Sistema demonstrating the coordinates of the building in the video
This video had previously circulated on Russian military Telegram channels in May 2024, described at that time as a “strike [aerial bomb] ODAB-1500 [on Ukrainian positions] in Vovchansk.” John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), confirmed the geolocation of the building — a former college — as being in the southern part of Vovchansk, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine.
“Russian strike with a UMPK-equipped ODAB-1500 bomb on a building in the southern part of Vovchans’k, just south of the Vovcha River (50.2826217, 36.9419119),” Hardie wrote on May 21, 2024.
This is not the first time the Russian military has presented old footage from other locations as “strikes against Ukrainian forces in the Kursk Region.”
On August 11, The Insider reported that state-run RIA Novosti, citing Russia’s MoD, published a video of “Russian Mi-28NM helicopters hitting Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) manpower and armored vehicles in the Kursk Region border area with S-13 air missiles.” In fact, the video was filmed in Ukraine’s Kreminna and Chasiv Yar.
Several days prior, on August 9, the Defense Ministry published a video clip illustrating what it claimed to be new strikes by the Russian military against the AFU in Sumy Oblast. The Insider revealed that the MoD falsely labeled the clip as being recent — but the video was recorded at least a month prior to Ukraine’s cross-border incursion, as it was published by the Russian state-run news agency TASS on July 14.
Sistema is a joint investigative project run by Current Time and Radio Liberty. Zvezda (lit. “Star”) is a Russian state-owned nationwide TV network run by the Russian Ministry of Defence.