Discover more from Weapons and Strategy
FAKE STORY, FAKE PHOTO OF ALLEGED NORTH KOREAN WOMEN IN KURSK
Daily Mail has now Pulled the Fake Article (see Below)
UPDATE: A day after the article below was written, the Daily Mail pulled the fake article. You will find that the link to the original Daily Mail article hot linked below no longer works. The Daily Mail says it got the original story from a “freelance” journalist. Actually that is rather presumptuous: it was a British-government origin source that provided the fake information, seemingly a normal practice.
The Daily Mail published a picture alleging two North Korean women military in Kursk.
The photo is a fake.
Many thanks to Levan Gudadze and his Telegram channel for pointing this out.
Here is the original photo which shows twin sisters Zhenya and Sasha. In 2023, they served as tank operators in the DPR Armed Forces unit "Oplot." The Oplot Brigade was a unit of the Donetsk People's Militia and later the Russian military. Oplot means Bastion.
Here is the fake picture where the faces of the women have been changed to Koreans.
The Daily Mail story can be found here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14156683/Kim-Jong-North-Korean-women-fight-Ukraine.html
The Daily Mail most likely got the fake photo and fake story from the Ukrainian propaganda mill.
It was hyped as a photo shared online and backup with an unknown alleged Russian trainer's statement as follows: "A Russian military trainer Oleg Tanasyuk who posted the picture wrote: 'Sisters from Korea Wei and Lin - we call them Vera and Lida - have been serving with us for two weeks already.' It is unclear why the Russians renamed them."
I can't prove it but I don't think any Russian military "trainer" said any such thing.
Beware of what you see and read these days.
No retraction yet from the Daily Mail. Not surprising.
The Daily Mail publishes a constant stream of anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian propaganda, much of it nonsense. It isn’t surprising, given the quality of journalism these days and the willingness of editors and publishers to turn their products into propaganda outlets.
Thanks for this. I always appreciate the people who have the time, skills, and inclination to run this kind of stuff down.
I've been watching the rollout of this North Korean BS story since its beginning, and have been pretty sure from the beginning that it was pure invention, presumably to justify some escalation the West already had teed up. I've seen that all the corporate media have been running with this story despite the fact that no one has presented any real proof.
You speculate that the possible source of this invention is Ukrainian in origin, which is uncritically accepted by the West. I think most of those accepting and propagating such stuff know full well that it is lies, but as long as they can attribute it to someone else, they are more than happy to advance it.
This methodology seems reminiscent of stuff like "Russiagate" during Trump's first term.
The names aren't Korean, but pseudo-Chinese. That should have been a dead giveaway.