On October 17-18th, Georgian (1, 2) and Russian-language Facebook accounts published a video showing a man dressed in a Ukrainian military uniform. In one shot, the video shows the man moving in the forest and then kneeling and hitting his head with his hands, being filmed with a video camera. From the descriptions of the authors of the posts and the comments left under the posts, one gets the impression that the current situation in Ukraine is staged, and the video in question demonstrates that.
The Facebook posts contain video manipulation elements and create the impression that the video was staged by the Ukrainian side. In fact, the video depicts the shooting of a music video and has no connection with the Ukrainian army. The man dressed as a soldier is Petr Sherekin, an actor and a Ukrainian refugee currently living in Germany.
The video published by the Russian-language Facebook account has the caption of the Telegram channel called ЛЕДОРУБ, and the description of the video posted on this channel says that “Ukraine’s armed forces have gone on the offensive.” The Facebook posts also make the impression that the video is staged and used as propaganda by the Ukrainian side.
The videos in the posts also feature a TikTok logo, as they were originally shared by a TikTok user named PITER SMOG, who is a man dressed as a soldier in the video.
PITER SMOG’s full name is Petr Sherekin, and the mentioned video shows the shooting of a music video. Sherekin published an extensive video on this topic on his YouTube channel on October 14th, noting that the clip was shot for the music video of the singer Anna Khanina.
Piotr Sherekin is an actor by profession; he has participated in several movies. In an interview published on salonmarketing.pro in 2018, Sherekin talks about his own salon, which he opened in Kyiv. He also mentions that he is the champion of Ukraine in karate.
As we learn from Sherekin’s videos, he left for Germany with his family after the start of the war in Ukraine. On his YouTube channel, Sherekin mainly publishes videos related to his daily life, the life of Ukrainian refugees in Germany, as well as filming and a healthy lifestyle.
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