Ukraine-related disinformation on YouTube

I stumbled upon a video on YouTube which starts with the host blaming Ukranian soldiers for using chemical weapons (cyanide). 2 people are speaking for a long time, the host and an ex-military adviser who is likely not aware that he is been fooled or purposefully lying. The video shows brief footage stitched together with sounds removed. They conveniently don’t link to the original source. There’s nothing in the source video which suggests the use of chemicals, it shows some explosive charges and a powered-off fridge. You can say that fridge is not on because there’s no frost or ice inside the freezer compartments. There are multiple comments in Telegram which mention that this material has been used by Russian propaganda. That’s what they do, they use real footage, then add a bunch of lies on top. Russians produce controversial materials regularly on a massive scale and it works well on domestic audiences. I’m concerned this is been used to mislead English-speaking audiences.

The video has only pro-Russian comments, my comments were deleted immediately. I encourage you to report the video as disinformation. If you still have concerns about drone footage, I found a good explainer article which analyses footage and has lots of information about the real use of chemical weapons in historic context. Chemical weapons are used very rarely in modern warfare. But there’s evidence of some chemical weapons used in Mariupol by Russia.

Generally, you need labs and protective gear when producing chemical weapons, it would require state support and can’t be just produced in a basement and stored in a turned-off fridge. Ukraine depends on western support, bragging about breaking the Geneva convention would be dumb. Donate to help Ukrainian efforts. 🇺🇦