Fact Check: ‘Ukraine Elite Drone’ Footage Does NOT Show Bakhmut Combat On April 1, 2023

Compilation

Does a video, published on social media, show “44 Russian Tanks” hit in a “Bakhmut trench” by a single “Ukraine elite Drone” on April 1, 2023? No, that’s not true: The same account posted multiple items in which the narrator mispronounced the name of the city being fought over, making similar claims that contradict each other in key details and re-using war footage compilations without citing any primary sources.

The clip was published on Facebook on April 2, 2023, under the title:

Today(Apr 1)Ukraine elite Drone hit 44 Russian Tanks in Minutes at terrible ambush in Bakhmut trench

This is what it looked like at the time of writing:

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Apr 3 14:45:49 2023 UTC)

The narrator mispronounced the name of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, known for a prolonged battle between Russian and Ukrainian forces, as “Bar-MOOT.”

Different variations of the claim posted within a four-day timeframe attributed the purported event to different dates and discussed a different number of the allegedly destroyed tanks, for example, here and here:

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Apr 3 17:20:45 2023 UTC)

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Apr 3 14:58:34 2023 UTC)

The Facebook page appears to have taken advantage of SEO-optimization techniques to increase viewership for each of these videos.

According to the Page Transparency tab, the account created on December 22, 2022, described itself as a “media company,” but its name, location and contact information were missing.

Sikafour, another page tagged in these posts, was launched on September 22, 2022. It was managed from Indonesia.

Both accounts carried clickbait war video content without clear sourcing.

Such clips circulated not only on Facebook. Examples of the same claim could be found on YouTube, too, for example, here:

(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Mon Apr 3 17:37:48 2023 UTC)

This YouTube channel’s logo appears during the first seconds of the initial video in question. As the account’s overview shows, it has a history of posting similar claims paired with identical or nearly identical thumbnails. Many of those clips repeated the same key words: “today,” “Ukraine” and “elite.”

(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Mon Apr 3 19:39:38 2023 UTC)

(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Mon Apr 3 19:40:04 2023 UTC)

While the YouTube account listed its location as the United States, it did not provide any information about the team behind it or its sources either.

Using the InVid keyframe analysis tool, Lead Stories compared the videos purportedly showing two attacks of the “unique” drone on April 3, 2023: one destroying “66 column Russian tanks”, another — “44 Russian tanks”. Despite the widely different claims of numbers of tanks destroyed in two attacks, the clips reused some of the same frames:

(Source: Invid screenshot taken on Mon Apr 3 20:51:14 2023 UTC)

(Source: Invid screenshot taken on Mon Apr 3 21:08:03 2023 UTC)

The same channel claimed that not the drone, but the “Ukraine Troop” destroyed the exact same number of Russian tanks – 44 – on March 31, 2023.