The post about Ukrainian prisoners unwilling to return home was published by the “ZhS Premium” Telegram channel on October 22, 2024.
“Betrayal! The American Institute for the Study of War has made an unexpected discovery: 70% of Ukrainian soldiers captured by Russia refuse to be included on exchange lists,” the authors of the Telegram channel claimed.
The video, attributed to ISW, features footage of Ukrainian soldiers and has no sound. A quote from ISW expert David Petraeus is shown as subtitles without any audio.
The WTF team found three key points that show the video is fake. The first, the footage is available on neither the ISW website nor its social media pages (like X and Facebook). We also didn’t find any reports of Ukrainian prisoners refusing to be exchanged.
The second point is that the video shared by “ZhS Premium” is formatted differently from those usually posted on ISW's YouTube channel. The brand's font and layout are clearly distinct, and ISW typically includes a speaking expert in their videos.
The third, video misrepresented the quote. It shows footage of ISW expert General David Petraeus with subtitles saying, “We are increasingly encountering the unwillingness of POWs from the Ukrainian Armed Forces to return to Ukraine.”
In reality, this quote is from Petraeus’s commentary on October 18, 2024, to the U.S. cable network NewsNation, where he discussed the situation in the Middle East, not anything related to Ukrainians.
To confirm that this video is fake, we reached out to the ISW. They responded:
“We are aware of videos created by third parties circulating on social media that falsely claim to represent ISW. <...> These videos were not produced by ISW and do not reflect the views or assessments of ISW or the views or assessments of the analysts they allegedly quote.”