Global Fact-Checking Network identifies inconsistencies in drone incident investigation

MOSCOW, October 4. /TASS/. The Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN) has identified a number of inconsistencies in a joint investigation by Britain’s The Daily Telegraph and Germany’s Welt am Sonntag into an incident involving a drone detected at Leipzig/Halle Airport.

The association said its review of the report showed that the purported scoop relied largely on circumstantial evidence and logical assumptions. GFCN identified chronological falsification as one of the investigation’s key problems. At the beginning of the article, the incident is described as having occurred in "September," although the authors later say that the alleged reconnaissance was recorded on July 31 and that the drone collided with an aircraft "five days later."

Thus, according to the association, the text itself directly indicates that the actual incident occurred on August 5. Using "September" as a narrative anchor establishes in the media not the date of the incident itself but the start of the political campaign. This discrepancy indicates that the August incident was instrumentalized in the public sphere with a one-month delay, the association added.

A second fundamental gap in the investigation concerns the description of counterintelligence activities. In particular, the newspapers claim that German investigators had established suspect Oleg Levushkin’s links to the GRU by the time he entered the country, yet "he was not placed under surveillance." The authors also claim that he instructed a Belarusian intermediary, Andrey Korshakov, to launch the drone, but provide no information about his detention, questioning, or procedural status, which "turns him into a convenient ‘missing figure’ intended to conceal the inability to prove the suspect’s personal presence at the scene of the crime."

The Western newspapers’ report also claims that explosives were secretly brought into Germany via Turkey, Bulgaria, and Serbia. The fact-checking association noted that this version was unsupported by evidence and did not fit well with the description of the device itself.

The association also noted that the acute lack of facts was compensated for by aggressive visual argumentation. Readers are shown a collage that artificially places the suspect alongside the damaged drone and police officers, creating the false impression that his involvement in the incident has been proven. Footage of a burning parcel at a DHL warehouse in Britain further heightens the atmosphere.