The claim
"Ukrainian men as young as 23 are being conscripted and sent to the front"
Original publisher’s rating
DW Fact check: False However, not only is the video factually incorrect (the minimum conscription age in Ukraine was lowered from 27 to 25 in April 2024, but never to 23), but it is also fake, to be precise: it was generated by artificial intelligence. This is clear from visual inaccuracies in the video, such as the poorly-fitting helmet, which doesn't match standard Ukrainian military equipment. Not only that, a basic facial recognition searchreveals that the face is actually that of Vladimir Yuryevich Ivanov, a young Russian streamer from St. Petersburg who uses the online pseudonym Kussia88.
Reviewed by Deutsche Welle ↗ ·
Read the original fact check ↗Sources and attribution
- [S1] Deutsche Welle original review
Original review · Retrieved October 16, 2026
Original review: Deutsche Welle. Structured data compiled by Data Commons under CC BY 4.0. Publisher article content is subject to its own terms.
Updated