Russia caught presenting own Kursk losses as Ukrainian defeats, OSINT analysis shows

On 4 January, as Ukraine’s forces commenced an offensive operation in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, GeoConfirmed made a revealing discovery. The open-source intelligence collective, which has monitored the war for nearly three years, identified a consistent pattern: whenever Ukraine launches significant operations, pro-Russian social media accounts flood platforms with claims of Ukrainian military catastrophe.

The choreography of this information warfare has become almost balletic in its predictability: each Ukrainian advance triggers a counter-offensive of pixels and posts, where defeat is constructed through a careful assemblage of misattributed footage, temporal sleight-of-hand, and—in a twist that might seem too obvious for fiction—the occasional repurposing of Russia’s own losses as Ukrainian ones.

This January’s performance featured two principal players: @NewRulesGeo, whose thread pirouetted through X (formerly Twitter) to capture an astonishing four million views, and North Wind, a Telegram channel with supposed ties to the Russian military, whose production drew an audience of nearly one hundred thousand.

@NewRulesGeo, despite its name suggesting geographical expertise, showed little regard for accuracy. They mixed recent footage from Kursk with unrelated old videos, and repeatedly used footage of the same destroyed vehicle while claiming each instance was a different Ukrainian loss.

North Wind went even further in their deception: they presented Russian vehicles destroyed in mid-December as Ukrainian losses from the recent offensive.

“We prefer not to invest too much time in debunking disinformation, as a lie can be made in just a few minutes, but the debunking can cost you days,” the investigators noted. This particular fact-check took several days and required the effort of dedicated volunteers performing detailed geolocation work.

Old Russian losses repackaged as Ukrainian defeats

North Wind’s deception comes into sharp focus through its narrative about the village of Berdin in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. It painted a dramatic scene of Ukrainian armored columns meeting swift destruction, complete with claims of successful strikes by Russian FPV drones, Lancet munitions, and artillery.

Their video, meant as evidence of Ukrainian losses, instead revealed an embarrassing error:

The proof is twofold:

• geolocation places these wrecks near Liubimovka, not Berdin, where North Wind claimed the battle occurred

• Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade published the footage on 17 December 2024, weeks before the current offensive began. In their eagerness to construct a narrative of Ukrainian defeat, North Wind inadvertently documented their own losses.

Recycled tanks and blurry videos

While North Wind relied on blatant misattribution of losses, @NewRulesGeopolitics employed a more sophisticated array of deceptive techniques. As a result, their thread on X amassed nearly four million views across 15 posts.

• Multiple claims from single incidents: They repeatedly used footage of the same British Challenger tank being hit by Russian drones to claim separate vehicle losses.

“A $4.9 million British Challenger tank destroyed by Russian FPV drone,” claimed one post, adding video.

$4.9 million British Challenger tank destroyed by Russian FPV drone that costs $10,000 max. pic.twitter.com/xdvbYddXNO— NewRulesGeopolitics (@NewRulesGeo) January 6, 2025

“Another Russian drone hit against a British Challenger tank,” declared another, also adding a video.

Another Russian drone hit against a British Challenger tank in Kursk.

Ukrainian crew seen fleeing the scene.

They’re going to be in big trouble for abandoning such an expensive piece of NATO equipment