A report from the open source intelligence (OSINT) research project GeoConfirmed claims to have found the first case of artificial intelligence being used to simulate Russia’s capture of territory in Ukraine. The video in question was published by the Telegram channel “DIVGEN 🚩 Karta SVO,” which has more than 75,000 subscribers.
The accompanying post claimed: “[This is from] our own sources. Soldiers of the 3rd Motorized Rifle Battalion of the 127th Regiment, together with Storm-V detachments, have completed the liberation of the urban-type settlement of Bilyi Kolodiaz.”
According to GeoConfirmed, a soldier holding a Russian flag was artificially added to footage taken by a reconnaissance drone. The project's analysts noted that at one point in the video, the soldier disappears for no visible reason, followed by the flag, which may indicate that AI was used in the editing process. OSINT analysts did indeed geolocate the footage to the area of Bilyi Kolodiaz in Ukraine’s Kharkiv Region, at coordinates 50.204659, 37.149611.
According to analysts from the Ukrainian mapping project DeepState, however, the settlement remains fully under Ukrainian control.
A researcher using the nickname Playfra noted that when the video is compared with a satellite image, the soldier’s width appears to be 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) before he suddenly vanishes from the frame — suggesting the video was most likely edited with AI.
The Ukrainian channel NIP “Tysk” drew attention to another video showing a Russian “flag planting” in Khrystoforivka. The channel said that video also was most likely created with AI: The soldier is not wearing a helmet, the flag suddenly unfurls on its own despite the absence of wind, and the soldier then disappears from the frame starting with his head.
On July 23, the Russian pro-war channel “Donetskaya Pekhota” (lit. “Donetsk Infantry”) wrote about a similar use of modern technology, albeit without providing the video in question:
“On the role of AI in reports to the Defense Ministry. The commander of one of the formations of the Southern Military District spent a long time hiding the loss of square kilometers and reporting upward with videos of flag plantings in more and more settlements and territories. He got careless and was caught on a video where the soldier with the flag had legs that did not touch the ground.”
