Russia’s state-run news agency TASS ran a story on Saturday in which it claimed that a Danish pilot who was involved in the training of Ukrainian F-16 crews was one of the three individuals killed when an Iskander-M ballistic missile struck an educational establishment in Kryvyi Rih on Friday.
The Russian news agency cited an unnamed military informant, without clarifying their nationality, which immediately rang alarm bells in the Western media as to the veracity of the claim.
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Pro-Kremlin social media showed no such reticence and quickly picked up the story and identified the “dead” pilot as Jeppe Hansen. As it spread, the narrative became further embellished with suggestions the Danish serviceman was actually in Ukraine to visit prostitutes in the city.
The Danish Ministry of Defense very quickly rejected the report and its defense minister, Troels Lund Poulsen in an e-mail to the Danish Ritzau Bureau and Berlingske news sites dismissed the claims as another example of a Kremlin-inspired “large-scale false influence and misinformation campaign.”
Poulsen categorically denied the reports saying: “No Danish soldiers have been killed in Ukraine. It is a totally false story that is running in the Russian media – probably to discredit Denmark and its support to Ukraine.”
Poulsen’s statement went on: “It is a serious attempt to manipulate the information environment at a time of heightened tensions. I take this [accusation] very seriously. But it is unfortunately part of a reality in the very serious security political situation we currently face.”
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In a December risk assessment of the security threats Denmark faced resulting from the war in Ukraine and other areas, the Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste (FE) – the Danish defense intelligence service – stated that Russia uses influence campaigns and that the threat from Russia’s influence campaigns against Western countries was expected to increase with the intention of creating discord and uncertainty to disrupt the unity of Western countries.
The GeoConfirmed fact checking website posted on “X” on Sunday, in response to a request to confirm the story, responded: We can’t – because you cannot confirm an incident that never happened.
Its post on “X” gave a detailed breakdown of all the claims relating to the story, backed up by geolocation data, and concluded it was another example of Russian disinformation. It said: “the mixing of verifiable facts with fabricated information is a sophisticated propaganda technique designed to enhance narrative credibility and increase story spread and believability.”
“The entire story of the killed F-16 instructor was completely fabricated – a deliberate and calculated disinformation campaign designed to spread false information about a purported incident involving a Danish F-16 instructor in Ukraine and put pressure on the support by Denmark to Ukraine by influencing the narrative.”
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