BTS Clip From Ukrainian TV Show Shared to Push 'Fake War in Ukraine' Narrative

The video shows two cast members of Ukrainian TV series ‘Contamin’ getting their makeup applied.

A video of makeup being applied onto a girl and a boy to show injuries and bleeding on their faces is being shared widely on social media. Users are sharing the clip to claim that the Ukrainian side is faking injuries and sharing ‘anti-Russia propaganda’ to build a false narrative.

The claim comes against the backdrop of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

However, we found that the video being shared shows behind-the-scenes footage of a Ukrainian television series ‘Contamin,’ whose plot deals with an epidemic and was shot in 2020.

We found a photograph of the boy in the video getting his makeup applied, which was shared by a crew member of the TV series.

CLAIM

The video is being shared to claim that Ukrainians are faking injuries to push ‘anti-Russia propaganda’ and that one should not believe everything that the media shows.

More posts with the same claim on social media can be seen here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

Using InVID, we divided the viral video into keyframes and ran reverse image searches on all of them. The results led us to a tweet that had shared the claim.

In the comments under this tweet, many social media users pointed that the video appeared to be taken from a film or a television series, as the duo were not wearing weather-appropriate clothing.

Taking a cue from this, we conducted keyword searches with variations of ‘Ukraine film set’ and ‘Ukraine TV series’.

The search led us to another tweet, which quote-tweeted a claim to highlight that the visuals were related to a Ukrainian-language TV series called ‘Contamin.’

We looked for visuals of Contamin across social media platforms, and found a tweet carrying ‘BTS from set of Contamin tv series (sic)’ and shared four photographs on 7 December 2020.

In one of these photos, the same boy from the viral video was seen getting his makeup done.

Responding to queries from journalists, the user, identified as one Artem Gvozdkov, said that the had taken the photos on the set of the TV series in 2020 and that the series was about an epidemic.

He also shared the name of his photography page in the thread. On the page, we found an album titled ‘Contamin’ which appeared to have stills from the show'.

Here, we found a black and white still which showed the girl in the viral video.

Evidently, the viral video doesn’t show Ukrainians faking injuries in order to push ‘anti-Russian propaganda.’ The video shows behind-the-scenes footage for a Ukrainian TV show titled ‘Contamin’ which was shot in 2020.

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