In an amazing display of how lazy some propaganda can be, the Russian Ministry of Defense tweeted out “irrefutable” proof that the U.S. was lending support to ISIS in Iraq and Syria — proof that turned to be promotional footage for a video game.
The now-deleted tweet fired off this Tuesday morning featured what appeared to be aerial photos of a vehicle convoy moving along a dirt road.
“This is the irrefutable evidence that there is no struggle against terrorism as the whole global community believes. The US are actually covering the ISIS combat units to recover their combat capabilities, redeploy, and use them to promote the American interests in the Middle East,” the tweet read, which was posted in both Russian and English.
The @mod_russia uses images from a computer game as evidence the US is working with ISIS https://t.co/8uv2vbEHeQ pic.twitter.com/EvqP1Id5pR
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) November 14, 2017
Some attentive Twitter users noticed that one of the images was lifted from a YouTube video of the mobile phone game AC-13 Gunship Simulator.
Giving the image away was text from the video game trailer that the Defense Ministry forgot to exclude, which read, “Development footage. This is a work in progress. All content is subject to change.” The words “all content” were still clearly visible in the image.
One Twitter user pointed out that another one of the images was taken from a June 2016 Iraqi Ministry of Defense video showing the Iraqi Air Force bombing ISIS near Fallujah.
Another alleged @mod_russia drone image accusing US of cooperating with IS was taken from a June 2016 Iraqi MoD video showing Iraqi Air Force bombing IS near Fallujah https://t.co/ybRbuAxA6w
(via @uckuduk1) pic.twitter.com/MtzjqAAStW— CIT (en) (@CITeam_en) November 14, 2017
Soon after the fraud was pointed out, the tweet was deleted without comment.
Featured image via Twitter
