War propaganda and the unverified video

When war propaganda relies on unverified videos

War propaganda no longer needs to be true: it is enough for it to be shared before it can be debunked. In recent hours, a video has been circulating which, according to its description, allegedly shows an act of violence against a Ukrainian soldier. The message accompanying it presents it as a denunciation. But the very chain of distribution has ended up becoming its best refutation.

The links that were supposed to confirm it came and went. Some were down, others forwarded with backup copies. Among those who managed to see it, suspicion soon arose: the material might not be what it claimed to be, but rather a commercial recording labelled as if it were a war document. Some even joked that the scene, rather than a battlefield, looked like it had been filmed in Zaragoza. The indecency lies not in raising the doubt, but in having spread the denunciation without verifying a single image.

In earlier conflicts, the fake video used to be cinematic propaganda with a stamp of fiction. Today, the tool is decontextualisation: taking a scene out of its context, changing the voice, adding a lurid headline and waiting for outrage to do the rest. Audiences, who trust official channels less and less, thus become the last filter in a system where anyone can publish and almost nobody checks.

The discussion has left at least one certainty: as long as the conflict keeps producing real victims, fake videos will keep manufacturing more. And the suspicion that any denunciation might be a fabrication will end up contaminating the genuine ones too. Verifying before sharing is not coldness; it is the only possible respect for real victims.