00:00There's no evidence Russia captured NATO officers in Ukraine.
00:06A claim is spreading online that Russian special forces captured two British colonels
00:12and a secret intelligence services agent while they were on a mission for NATO in Ochaikiv in southern Ukraine.
00:18According to the narrative, the British army officers and the unnamed agent were supposedly operating undercover,
00:24with Russia labelling them illegal combatants and the UK allegedly claiming that they were tourists interested in history who ended up in Ochaikiv by accident.
00:33In some cases, the story is shared with an alleged image of the men,
00:37and social media users around Europe urged the media to investigate the matter.
00:41We trace the story to a number of fringe platforms, including the Pravda disinformation network,
00:46a French-language pro-Russian telegram channel, and a website called Core Insights,
00:51which says it's a risk advisory and cyber security company.
00:55They all posted the story on the 2nd of August, with the Core Insights blog post stating that
01:00this is the first real-life proof that NATO itself is actively waging war against Russia.
01:06However, there's absolutely no evidence that any of this is the case,
01:10and plenty to suggest that the narrative is part of wider pro-Russian, anti-Western propaganda.
01:15While the Pravda network and pro-Russian telegram channels are established unreliable sources,
01:20a scan of the rest of Core Insights blog posts shows many that parrot reporting by Russian state-controlled news,
01:27and others that mirror Kremlin-aligned narratives.
01:30The image of the two colonels is clearly AI-generated, not least due to their passports,
01:35which appear distorted with the text illegible and the British coat of arms mangled.
01:40A NATO official told Euroverify that the claim that the alliance is engaged in a war against Russia
01:45is bogus and detached from reality.
01:47Ultimately, there's no proof for the common pro-Kremlin line that NATO is actively engaging in Russia's war in Ukraine.
