The O Team: community and OSINT to fight disinformation after Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Thus ‘The O Team’ was born. O for OSINT: a volunteer anti-hoax brigade to fight together against disinformation about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This team, made up of malditos and malditas who have given us their OSINT-related superpowers, has been helping us for several weeks now to give context to videos and images related to the Russian attack on Ukraine. These are some of the articles they have helped us with.

The geolocation of the photo of the military armored vehicles next to a building that they claimed was a hospital

A few days ago, after the explosion at the children’s hospital in Mariupol (Ukraine), a photograph of some military armored vehicles next to a building went viral with a message stating that Ukrainian troops were using the bombed hospital as a shield. In other versions it was said that it was a «kindergarten.» 

In these cases, it is important to geolocate the image to really know what the building corresponds to. The difficulty in this case was that in Mariupol there is no Google Street View. We proposed to the damn members of Team O to use Yandex Maps , but we found that in the city there are many buildings similar to the one in the picture, and that the buildings with that shape in Mariupol are kindergartens and are called «Detsky sad № XYZ «. Looking at some of them, one of the damn people on the team geolocated the image: it was of a building about 10 kilometers away in a straight line from the hospital.

Look for signs that a video is manipulated or not

Different disinformation has been claiming for days that Zelensky has fled Ukraine, without providing evidence. One of these hoaxes states that a video recorded on March 11 was filmed in chroma key, “a green screen”. We proposed to the damned Team O to look for chroma key signs or reasons why the video was not manipulated. Through observation, the damned detected several signs that the video was not manipulated: 

• Zelensky’s hair moves and steam can be seen coming out of his mouth at several moments. 

• The camera moves at the beginning and both Zelensky and the background vibrate. 

• In a moment at the beginning when “you see something pass in front of the camera and it passes from the background area and the subject.” 

• During the video, the sun moves and illuminates Zelensky’s head or the lower right corner and the entire video changes brightness accordingly.

• The integration of the subject and the background is perfect for a chroma key.

• The granularity of the image looks equivalent in both areas (subject and background).

Additionally, when changing the color temperature in the video, it varies for both the background and Zelensky. You have complete verification available at Maldito Bulo.

Geolocate a meeting using the newspaper library (and looking at the carpet)

In line with the disinformation that Zelensky fled from Kiev/Kyiv, a hoax has also circulated that says that Zelensky’s meeting with three European prime ministers on March 15 was in Poland. In order to debunk this hoax, we have taken as a reference the photos of the meeting with the Prime Ministers distributed by the Ukrainian presidency. One of them shows the room where the meeting took place. The damned Team O located in the newspaper archive images of the same room in meetings held in 2021: it coincides with the room of the Presidential Office of the President of Ukraine, located in Kiev, where Zelensky usually attended conferences and meetings before the Russian invasion.

Picture of Zelenski in December 2021 and at the meeting with European prime ministers.

Interactive content by Flourish

The images distributed of this meeting also show a press conference in another space of the building. The damned Team O noticed the carpet: on Google Maps there is an image from 2017 of the Ukrainian presidential office where you can see that the carpet is the same .

How to be part of ‘The O Team’

Maldita.es is a non-profit foundation and ‘The O Team’ is just one of the ways you can help us in our mission against disinformation. If you have the knowledge and want to be part of this team to help us stop hoaxes, write to us at [email protected] .

You can also help us by adding your superpowers to the fight against hoaxes and collaborate financially by becoming an ambassador for Maldita.es to support our mission. We need you by our side to fight disinformation!