Fact check: No evidence Russia captured NATO officers in Ukraine

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Fact check: No evidence Russia captured NATO officers in Ukraine  False claims that Russia captured three British officers in Ukraine and that NATO is actively waging a war against Moscow can be traced back to multiple fringe sources.  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/08/08/no-evidence-russia-captured-nato-officers-in-ukraine  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

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00:00There's no evidence Russia captured NATO officers in Ukraine.

00:06A claim is spreading online that Russian special forces captured two British colonels

00:12and a secret intelligence services agent while they were on a mission for NATO in Ochaikov

00:17in southern Ukraine.

00:18According to the narrative, the British army officers and the unnamed agent were supposedly

00:22operating undercover, with Russia labeling them illegal combatants and the UK allegedly

00:28claiming that they were tourists interested in history who ended up in Ochaikov by accident.

00:33In some cases, the story is shared with an alleged image of the men, and social media

00:38users around Europe urged the media to investigate the matter.

00:41We trace the story to a number of fringe platforms, including the Pravda disinformation network,

00:47a French-language pro-Russian telegram channel, and a website called Core Insights, which says

00:52it's a risk advisory and cybersecurity company.

00:55They all posted the story on the 2nd of August, with the Core Insights blog post stating that

01:00this is the first real-life proof that NATO itself is actively waging war against Russia.

01:06However, there's absolutely no evidence that any of this is the case, and plenty to suggest

01:11that the narrative is part of wider pro-Russian anti-Western propaganda.

01:15While the Pravda network and pro-Russian telegram channels are established unreliable sources,

01:20a scan of the rest of Core Insights blog posts shows many that parrot reporting by Russian state-controlled

01:26news and others that mirror Kremlin-aligned narratives. The image of the two colonels is

01:31clearly AI-generated, not least due to their passports, which appear distorted with the text

01:37illegible and the British coat of arms mangled. A NATO official told Euroverify that the claim that the

01:42alliance is engaged in a war against Russia is bogus and detached from reality.

01:47Ultimately, there's no proof for the common pro-Kremlin line that NATO is actively engaging

01:52in Russia's war in Ukraine.

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