AUGUSTDORF, GERMANY – FEBRUARY 1: German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius rides with soldiers… [+] Leopard 2 main battle tank during a visit to the Bundeswehr’s 203rd tank battalion on February 1, 2023 in Augustdorf. Germany will supply the Ukrainian armed forces with Leopard 2 tanks and has started training Ukrainian tank crews. Other European countries, including Spain, Finland, Norway and Poland, are also planning to provide Ukraine with Leopards for a total of about 80 tanks soon, with more to come later. (Photo by Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images)
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Russia claimed this week that it has softened Ukraine’s long-awaited military offensive earlier this week, and Kremlin officials even announced on Tuesday that Russian ground forces had successfully destroyed eight German-made Leopard 2 main battle tanks (MBTs) and more than 100 other armored vehicles in the last days.
“Total losses of Ukrainian troops in the southern Donetsk region amounted to more than 1,500 Ukrainian soldiers, 28 tanks, including 8 German-made Leopard tanks, three French-made АМХ-10 wheeled tanks and 109 armored fighting vehicles,” the Russian ministry said the defense minister of the Russian state news agency Tass.
The claims have not been independently verified, and Kiev said the claims are merely Russian propaganda and part of an ongoing disinformation campaign.
Earlier this year, Berlin announced that it would supply several Cold War-era Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, while Paris also supplied the AMX-10 wheeled tank in support of Kiev.
The video proof – not quite!
Perhaps to back up the Kremlin’s claims, Russian state media outlet Ria Novosti published video footage on social messaging platform Telegram on Tuesday, claiming the nearly minute-long clip was taken by a Ka-52 “Alligator” attack helicopter, which was being attacked the crew took aim A formation of Leopard 2 MBTs crossing an open field.
But instead of serving as smoking evidence to back up Moscow’s claims, the post on Telegram quickly crashed and burned to the ground. The video was heavily mocked as observant viewers noted that the Ka-52 had not actually attacked any Leopard 2s or even tanks.
The objects seen in the grainy footage have been identified as agricultural implements.
“That is possible [sic] the dumbest killing video of this whole war and i really mean it. This Russian Ka-52 gunship crew thought they targeted and destroyed Leopard 2 tanks (you read that right). Even a semi-professional can clearly see that [sic] agricultural harvesting and spraying machines. And as if that wasn’t stupid enough, Russian regime bloggers like Kotsnews and Ria Novosti have released this footage claiming to do just that,” tweeted @Tendar, blogger for military news and analysis.
Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) added: “The vehicles attacked by the Ka-52 ATGM not only do not resemble tanks, but are actually harmless agricultural implements – a sprayer and combine harvesters.”
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister, also tried to debunk the video, posting via Twitter (@Gerashchenko_en): “The vehicles in the footage released by the Russian Defense Ministry do not resemble tanks at all” in silhouette. They most resemble combine harvesters.”
Propaganda failure – maybe not
Both Kyiv and Moscow – and their proxies – have shared countless “war porn”-style videos since the war began more than 15 months ago, to support their respective claims and also to highlight the other side’s setbacks on the battlefield. It’s common for such videos and photos to be taken out of context, heavily edited, and even shot far from the front lines.
However, this particular video went viral on social media for all the wrong reasons – and the state media should have been clear that it did not substantiate the Kremlin’s claims.
“For a former Kansas farm boy who spent his summers driving combines, it looks more like a leopard got hit,” said Dr. Matthew J. Schmidt, Associate Professor of National Security and Political Science at the University of New Haven. “It no longer takes a satellite to distinguish a harvester from a tank.”
More importantly, this video — and the reactions it received — serves as an example of how crowdsourcing efforts can quickly debunk the propaganda circulated by official state media.
“That’s the great thing about social media: there are thousands of pretty good amateur analysts who can make assessments on these things that used to be reserved for the intelligence community,” Schmidt added.
This wasn’t the first time Russia had claimed to have destroyed a Leopard 2, but it’s arguably one of the least convincing.
“One of the things that’s really interesting about this story is how insidious it is. I agree that it’s ridiculous because it’s so easy to disprove, but research shows that the purpose of misinformation campaigns isn’t necessarily to “get away with it.” “It clouds the situation so much that the mere notion of what is true and what isn’t becomes irrelevant,” said Dr. Clifford Lampe, a professor in the University of Michigan School of Information.
“It has to do with what Walter Langer called ‘the big lie’ in the 20th century – that ‘people are more likely to believe a big lie than a small one, and if you repeat it often enough, sooner or later people will believe it ‘” Lamp continued. “So it’s easy to refute a claim about tanks, but they keep repeating the lie and some people are going to believe it — probably the people who need to believe it to keep supporting the government.”
Russia may know that some will dispute claims that the video is about the Leopard 2, but the Kremlin can still claim that eight of the tanks were destroyed nonetheless.
“Claims like these aren’t about being factual, they’re about creating a plausible narrative,” said Lampe. “I suspect this is not a failure on their part, but part of a broader and successful strategy. I mean, the Russians literally wrote the book on these kinds of campaigns in the 1930s.”