Moscow denounces deepfake video as “grossly counterfeit” — RT Russia and former Soviet Union

A video in which Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova offers to return the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant to Ukraine in exchange for Kiev canceling its military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is a video in which Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova offers to return the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant to Ukraine in exchange for Kiev canceling its military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. “rude fake” the ministry said on Saturday.

The video in question circulated on Russian and Ukrainian Telegram channels on Friday. In the clip, Zakharova appears to state that “The Russian side is ready to consider transferring the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant to the control of kyiv’s representatives in exchange for the voluntary withdrawal of the Ukrainian armed forces from the Kursk region.”

Zakharova never made such a statement. According to the ministry, the clip was “hastily assembled” using footage from a briefing by the spokeswoman in July.

“Ukrainian special services, with the help of their Western supervisors, continue to actively use deepfake and other technologies based on artificial intelligence to spread false information about the situation in the border regions of our country,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that the video is a “gross fake”.

“We emphasize that Maria Zakharova never said anything like that. Authentic comments of the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry are available on her Telegram channel and on the official resources of the ministry,” the statement concludes.

The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant was seized by Russian forces in 2022, four days after Moscow began its military operation. Six months later, the Zaporozhye region voted to join the Russian Federation. Throughout the first year of the conflict, Russian forces thwarted repeated attempts by the Ukrainian military to attack the plant — which is on the Dnieper River — with landing craft and drones.

Ukraine launched its largest attack on Russian territory since the conflict began on Tuesday. The Russian Defense Ministry initially estimated that about 1,000 troops and dozens of armored vehicles, some supplied by the West, took part in the assault on the Kursk region. Later media reports suggested that the total force involved was several times larger and that some elite Ukrainian units had been withdrawn from the front lines to reinforce the attack.

According to the Defense Ministry, the Ukrainian advance has been halted and Russian reserves have been redeployed to the region to confront Ukrainian units still active there. The ministry says kyiv has lost up to 1,100 soldiers and 140 armored vehicles in the region so far.