The Financial Times exposed the Russian military’s frontline fraud: AI was used to generate false results and deceive others, leading to heavy casualties on the frontline.

The latest investigation by the Financial Times pointed out that when the battlefield was extremely difficult to advance and casualties were heavy, the Russian military began to suffer from serious "battle report flooding" chaos. As the Ukrainian front reached a stalemate in 2026, the Russian frontline troops, which were under tremendous pressure, began to frequently use artificial intelligence (AI) "deepfake" technology to fabricate war results. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin may be deceived by these fake war reports.

Reports pointed out that in mid-October this year, the Russian commander boasted that he had captured the key frontline town of Dobropillia in Ukraine. Later, the Ministry of Defense released a drone video showing soldiers waving Russian flags in the ruins. However, the open-source investigation agency "Conflict Intelligence Team" (CIT) found that the direction of the flag in the video showed abnormal changes and was "undoubtedly manipulated." In fact, nearly three weeks after Putin claimed to have occupied the town, the Ukrainian army is still holding on to its position.

Daniel Mealie, an analyst at the Institute of War (ISW), a Washington think tank, pointed out that they have discovered 35 fake videos released by Russian military units and suspected of using AI to generate or modify them. These films often contain absurd flaws, such as soldiers with strange proportions, or people and flags suddenly disappearing into the trees, triggering ridicule among Russia's war-fighting community.

People familiar with the matter revealed that in order to communicate or cover up battlefield performance, the troops reported mythical results to Putin step by step; "When the top brass ordered to continue advancing based on these (false) occupied positions, in fact our troops were not there at all," leading to heavy casualties.

Putin claimed in his October briefing that the Russian army had captured 6,500 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory this year, but the highest estimate by independent analysts was only about 1,500 square kilometers. Dara Massicot, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, warned that the Kremlin is not subject to any domestic pressure to provide accurate explanations, and this type of fictitious victory propaganda and cognitive operations are expected to continue to be staged to create the illusion that Ukraine's defenses are collapsing.