Information that the Belgorod Military Registration and Enlistment Office is recruiting schoolchildren to work part-time as “junior employees” in the summer turned out to be fake. This is what was reported by Verified, a website specialized in exposing fake news.
The editors of “Verified” could not find any messages about the initiative on any official resources of the Belgorod region or in local media.
The post also uploaded an image of the soldier from the ad to Hive’s AI content detector – and estimated the probability that the image was AI-generated at 92%. The image also has a SynthID digital watermark, indicating that it “very likely” was generated by Google’s neural networks.
Verified also wrote that a week ago something similar appeared on the Internet advertisement In Ukrainian: It was reported that the Ukrainian National Police invited schoolchildren to work part-time at the Cherkasy Technical Cooperation Center. As in the Belgorod case, it began with the phrase: “Do you like sports? Are you looking for a summer job?” When the photo spread, the Cherkasy region police issued an official denial.
The “Go Through the Forest” human rights project, which was the first to publish a photo about the alleged recruitment of schoolchildren at the military registration and enlistment office in Belgorod, reported that the photo was sent to them via a comment bot.
The news that the Belgorod Military Registration and Enlistment Office is recruiting schoolchildren aged 15-17 to work over the summer in the positions of “junior officer” and “military registration specialist” appeared in the film “Go Through the Forest” on the evening of June 5. It was later distributed by some major media outlets, including Meduza.
Meduza editors apologize to readers for publishing an inaccurate advertisement.