It’s exhausting, isn’t it? Just when you think the world can’t get any more confusing, you see a photograph that looks real enough to break your heart. A man sits with a small dog among the rubble, dust and pain around him. Then you see the same man in another city. Then another. And suddenly, the photograph that made you feel something becomes a tool of suspicion. That’s exactly what happened recently when Russian propaganda began circulating three images of a man with a little dog, claiming he was a paid actor appearing at shelling sites in Dnipro, Kyiv, and Rivne. The implication was ugly: that Ukrainians were staging their own suffering. But when the images were examined closely, the story fell apart. Two of those photographs were not photographs at all. They were generated by artificial intelligence, made to look like emotional reality. Only one was genuine. And in that truth lies the deeper, more painful lesson about how modern disinformation works—it borrows real grief and wraps it in falsehood.
Let’s take the real image first. It was released by police in Rivne on October 13, after a Russian shelling attack. That photo shows a man with his small dog, and it is a true moment of loss and displacement in a city under fire. It happened. It cannot be explained away. The other two images, supposedly from Dnipro and Kyiv, were digital fabrications. Specialized services that analyze online content confirmed the telltale signs of generative AI—the slightly wrong geometry, the blurry edges, the way light clings too perfectly, the subtle signs that no camera ever captured. Once those fake images were separated from the real one, the entire narrative of a “hired actor” lost its foundation. There was no actor. There was only a cruel attempt to build a conspiracy theory out of pixel dust. That is not just a lie; it is an insult to the people who lived through those moments, and to the journalists and responders who risk their lives to document them.
This is not a strange accident of the internet. It is a systematic technique. Russian propaganda has learned that a shocking image travels faster than a correction, and that doubt can be planted more easily than truth can be harvested. By taking one real photograph and placing it beside two fake ones, propagandists create a false pattern. They want you to look at real evidence of attacks and think: “But wait—was that staged too?” The Center for Countering Disinformation has pointed out exactly this tactic. The goal is not to convince people that every image is fake. It is to make them believe no image can be trusted. Once that doubt creeps in, the horror of a missile strike on a residential building becomes a debatable topic. The death of a child becomes a suspicious detail. And the international community, instead of focusing on the aggressor, is pulled into a tired argument about whether the casualties are real. That is the quiet victory of disinformation: it steals the ability to feel certainty, and with it, the ability to act.
The same pattern appears in the renewed propaganda around Bucha. When the world saw the streets of Bucha after Russian forces withdrew, the evidence was devastating. Russian media and their online echo chambers immediately went to work, not by denying the event altogether, but by flooding the information space with alternate explanations, obscure “investigations,” and accusations that the tragedy was staged by the Ukrainian side or Western intelligence. This is not aimed at a domestic audience alone; it is aimed at foreign audiences, particularly those far from the war, who may not know how to sort through competing claims. The intent is to weaken support for Ukraine, delay decisions on sanctions and aid, and make the war feel like a confusing fog rather than a clear case of aggression. The escalation of this campaign around Bucha is a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the continuing terror against Ukraine’s civilian population. While the world argues about the authenticity of a photograph, real people are hiding in basements, real buildings are burning, and real families are being torn apart.
Even beyond the war in Ukraine, the same machinery of fabricated reality turns up in other stories. Take the recent bizarre claim that FBI Director Kash Patel visited Russia on October 14. When media reports surfaced, he dismissed them as fake. At first glance, that might seem unrelated to the photos of the man with the dog. But it is part of the same informational atmosphere—a place where false stories can appear fully formed, spread quickly, and then require time and energy to debunk. Every fake story, whether about an AI-generated man at a shelling site or a foreign official’s travels, has a purpose: to keep us reacting, keep us confused, and keep us from focusing on what matters. The more nonsense fills the air, the harder it is to hear the quiet, real voice of someone who just lost their home. This is why media literacy is no longer a luxury—it is a survival skill. We must learn to pause before sharing, to check the source, to notice the unnatural perfection of an image, and to trust established organizations that verify facts rather than viral emotions.
But there is something else we can do, something more human. We can choose not to let our empathy be stolen. When we see a photo of a man with a dog in the rubble, our first instinct should be compassion, not suspicion. That instinct is healthy. Propagandists want to kill it. They want us to be so afraid of being fooled that we become cold, cynical, and passive. The best response is not to stop believing in anything—it is to believe wisely: in verified truth, in honest journalism, and in the dignity of every person affected by war. We should hold onto our compassion and direct it toward action: supporting humanitarian efforts, amplifying credible reports, and remembering that behind every image—real or fake—there is a war that is not hypothetical. The man and his dog in Rivne are real. The attacks are real. The grief is real. Russian propaganda may create fake photos, but it cannot create an alternative world unless we let it. So let’s look closely, think clearly, and feel deeply. That is the quiet, fierce resistance to disinformation. And if you want to keep following these stories and learn how to spot falsehood, read us and download our app—not to be told what to think, but to be equipped to think well.