Deepfake of US official appears in Russia after reference to Ukraine attacks

A day after U.S. authorities said Ukraine could use American weapons in limited attacks on Russia, a deepfake video of a U.S. spokesman discussing the approach surfaced online.

In the fake video, which is based on real footage, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller appears to suggest that the Russian city of Belgorod, just 40 kilometers north of the Ukrainian-Russian border, is a legitimate target for such attacks.

The 49-second video clip, which appears authentic despite telltale signs of manipulation, illustrates the growing threat posed by disinformation and in particular by so-called deepfake videos based on artificial intelligence.

U.S. officials said they had no information about the video’s origins, but they are particularly concerned about how Russia might use such techniques to manipulate opinion about the war in Ukraine or even American political discourse.

According to the video, “there are practically no civilians left in Belgorod,” Miller is said to have said in response to a reporter’s question at the State Department. “The place is practically full of military targets, and we see the same thing happening in the surrounding regions.”

“Russia must get the message that this is unacceptable,” Mr Miller adds in the video, which has been widely shared on Telegram channels followed by Belgorod residents to provoke reactions from Russian government officials.

The claim in the video about Belgorod is completely false. Although the city has been the target of some Ukrainian attacks and its schools are operating online, its 340,000 residents have not been evacuated.

The false claims that civilians have fled and that the city is mainly a military zone may give the impression that the West is willing to support indiscriminate attacks there. But that is not the case.

President Biden has given Ukraine limited permission to use American weapons for self-defense strikes in Russia. The change of course came in response to Russia’s positioning of missiles, glide bombs and artillery shells just across the Ukrainian border to attack the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and its surroundings.

The video also shows Mr Miller apparently responding to a reporter’s claim – also manipulated – that other countries would “allow their weapons to penetrate deep into Russian territory.” This statement is not true, although some Western leaders have said their weapons could be used to hit border targets in Russia that threaten Ukraine.

“So we’re going to support our allies in whatever they do and maybe help some of the people who are still undecided to make the right decision,” Mr Miller is said to have said.

Mr. Miller, who was traveling with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Moldova and the Czech Republic this week, condemned the video in a statement.

“The Kremlin has made the spread of disinformation a core strategy to mislead people both inside and outside Russia,” he said. “There is hardly a more convincing sign that your decisions are not working than that you have to resort to outright fabrications to defend them to your own people, not to mention the rest of the world.”

Several Russian media outlets and websites referenced or shared the video, but failed to mention that the lip-syncing was incorrect—or that Miller’s shirt and tie changed color in the middle of it.

Indeed, the fight against Russian disinformation was a central theme of Blinken’s recent trip. In both Moldova and the Czech Republic, he spoke publicly about such attacks in European countries, which he said were orchestrated by pro-Russian propagandists. In many cases, the actors spread lies through networks on social media platforms, including through fake accounts.

At a meeting in Prague on Friday, Blinken and his counterparts from other NATO member states discussed how to counter Russian disinformation and other types of “hybrid attacks” aimed at undermining governance and democratic systems in the United States and its allied European states.

“I can tell you that at today’s meeting, virtually every ally was caught up in this escalation of Russia’s hybrid attacks,” Blinken said at a press conference on Friday afternoon. “We know what they are up to, and we will respond both individually and collectively as needed.”

At the trip’s first stop in Chisinau, Moldova, U.S. officials and their counterparts discussed online propaganda aimed at undermining President Maia Sandu, who is campaigning for Moldova’s accession to the European Union and is running for re-election in October.

On Thursday, Mr Blinken and Jan Lipavsky, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic, signed a memorandum of understanding in Prague to counter the “manipulation of state information by foreign states,” the State Department said.

Also in attendance was James P. Rubin, who held Miller’s position in the Clinton administration and is now Special Envoy for Countering Disinformation and Coordinator of the US State Department’s Global Engagement Center.

Miller’s false statements were repeated verbatim on the Telegram channel of Russia’s Human Rights Council, a government body that officially advises President Vladimir V. Putin. The council’s account then shared the angry response of its chairman, Valery Fadeyev.

“Washington deliberately refuses to acknowledge Kyiv’s obvious crimes against humanity,” Fadeyev wrote. “I do not expect this information to be passed on to the cynic by the State Department, but the truth is ours in any case.”

In his post condemning Mr Miller’s “lies,” Mr Fadeyev suggested that the United States failed to understand that civilians were in danger in Belgorod. He said at least 175 civilians had been killed and another 800 injured in the Belgorod region since February 2022.

The Russian state news agency TASS published an article based on Fadeyev’s comments on Thursday. As of Friday evening, the Human Rights Council had not yet issued a statement on its Telegram channel admitting that the video was fake.

The Insider, an independent Russian media outlet whose section is dedicated to combating fake news, pointed out that the video was also available on the Russian social network VK, which is now controlled by businessmen close to Putin, as well as on other websites run by pro-war propagandist Alexander Kots.

Life in Belgorod is far from normal: classes are held online only and air raid sirens sound regularly. Explosions are heard regularly, damaging buildings and killing civilians. A series of explosions on December 30, 2023, which Moscow blamed on Ukraine, killed 25 people and injured at least 100. The explosions came a day after Russian airstrikes in cities across Ukraine killed 57 people and injured 160.

Some regions near the border have been evacuated, and many smaller towns and villages near the border are regularly targeted by drone and artillery attacks from Ukraine. In late April, Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said at least 120 civilians, including 11 children, had died as a result of Ukrainian attacks. He said another 651 people had been injured since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting from Washington.