Russia warns of a “false speech” by Putin declaring martial law

2023-06-05 20:42:14

A face and a voice “very similar” to those of Vladimir Putin appeared on the airwaves of Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk media, announces the Russian opposition site Medusa.

The speech, also shared this Monday, June 5 on social networks, announced the evacuation of these three Russian regions, as well as a general mobilization due to an alleged Ukrainian attack supported by theI’ll take it. Problem: it would be a fake.

The Russian authorities quickly denied being at the origin of this message, which they attribute to hackers “trying to ‘sow panic’”. Close to power, the press agencies RIA Novosti et Tass quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskovfor who “the entirety of the messages is completely false”. The Russian Channel Mir has for its part confirmed to have been the subject of a hacking operation.

“Deepfake” strategy

For their part, the regional authorities of Belgorod speak of a video created using the technique of “deepfake”, reports Vice. Artificial intelligence software can indeed modify the image and sound of a video, in order to create false speeches. But the specialized media specifies not having “confirmed himself the nature of the method used for this hoax”.

Deepfakes have already been used in connection with the war in Ukraine. In March 2022, a false message of surrender from Volodymyr Zelensky had been disseminated on social networks. In response, a similar fake speech by Vladimir Putin was posted online. But such videos were relatively crude and they had not been shown on traditional news channels.

“The hack in Russia appears to coincide with what Russian military experts describe as the start of the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive”, specifies the correspondent in Russia of the Telegraph. In recent days, several villages in the Russian region of Belgorod have been evacuated due to artillery fire. On Monday, the Ukrainian general staff announced that it had gained ground not far from Bakhmout, in eastern Ukraine. However, he did not give further details on the rest of the operations in progress.