The AI-generated images resemble cheap cartoons, the floating passport covers are illegible and there is no evidence that their alleged holders even exist.

Nevertheless, an entirely fabricated story of three British military officers being "captured" in a Russian raid on a Ukrainian naval base has spread online in the past week — even being shared by two former British members of parliament and gaining traction from Norway to Pakistan.

DW takes a look at a narrative which bears all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation and the channels via which such stories spread.

Claim: "Russian Spetsnaz RAID and capture senior UK officers in Ochakov!"

DW Fact Check: False

A story appeared in Russian media last week that three British military officers — supposedly two colonels in the British Army and an officer from British military intelligence (MI6) — were captured in a Russian raid on a Ukrainian naval base in the small southern city of Ochakiv, known in Russian as Ochakov.

One of the most prominent social media posts (screenshot above) regurgitating the story has accrued almost 500,000 views on X (formerly Twitter), another has almost 400,000 and another has over 222,000.

The "colonels" were named as "psychological ops specialist Edward Blake" and "Richard Carroll – a Ministry of Defence official with Middle East experience" who were captured during a "lightning-fast" nighttime raid by elite spetsnaz (special forces) troops in an operation codenamed "Skat-12."

A spectacular military and diplomatic coup were it true — which it's not; it's completely made up.

As Craig Langford from the specialist UK Defence Journal (UKDJ) analyzed, there is no trace of "Edward Blake" or "Richard Carroll"........

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