A viral video, which was mistakenly used by Israel’s Channel 13 news, claimed it was running live footage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
The clip featured a crash-landed TIE fighter from Star Wars and even shows stormtroopers standing beside the Imperial aircraft.
The Mail Online reports: An investigation at Channel 13 has been launched and the editor has been suspended after the video was aired during a montage of destruction in Ukraine.
The clip was originally an advert produced by Disney and Lucasfilm in 2014 to promote a new Star Wars channel on Sky Deutschland.
It shows the stormtroopers surveying the crashed starfighter on a German autobahn while cars zoom past.
The original caption said: ‘Warning: Unsecured crash on the A3. Please turn right and not overtake!’
It is believed the video started circulating on the messaging app Telegram after the Russian invasion, duping people into believing it showed footage from the war.
Ukraine has warned about disinformation being shared online, saying Russia is preparing an online campaign to suggest senior military and political figures have surrendered.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said that the campaign will include fake documents and doctored footage to shift the narrative around Russia’s thus far unsuccessful attempts to topple Ukraine’s top brass.
‘To ”confirm” this fake information, seemingly signed ”documents”, as well as fake, edited videos will be distributed,’ Reznikov said in an online statement, before posting a similar message on Twitter.
Reznikov assured that the Ukrainian leadership remains in Kyiv despite the Russian onslaught, declaring: ‘No surrender! Only victory!’
YouTube and Facebook have banned Russian state-owned media outlets RT and Sputnik’s channels across Europe, after Facebook and Twitter announced over the weekend that it had blocked a set of pro-Russian fake accounts and hacked profiles sharing anti-Ukrainian messages on social media.
The EU has also introduced a ban on RT and Sputnik’s channels, and levied targeted sanctions against key individuals thought to be involved in Russia’s propaganda machine, including editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya Margarita Simonyan.
Meanwhile, Russia’s state communications regulator Roskomnadzor hit out at social media giant Meta – parent company of Facebook and Instagram – and Twitter for being complicit in spreading what it said were fake posts about what it described as Russia’s ‘special operation’ in Ukraine.
Russia has also announced it will limit access to the BBC website.
Access to websites of the BBC, the independent news website Meduza, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and the Russian-language website of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Svoboda, were ‘limited’ by Roskomnadzor following a request from prosecutors.
(Article by Niamh Harris republished from NewsPunch.com)
