As Battlefield Gains Stall, Russia Turns to AI to Manufacture the Victories It Cannot Achieve

Russia’s military propaganda apparatus has shifted to AI-generated “flag-raising” videos to simulate battlefield gains it cannot achieve on the ground, a pattern analysts say is directly tied to stalling advances and the Kremlin’s need to project momentum to its domestic audience.

For months, Russian military-linked Telegram channels have been circulating footage that follows a recognisable script: Russian tricolours raised over Ukrainian positions, soldiers planting flags in settlements, and dramatic scenes of apparent territorial conquest. The problem, according to researchers, is that much of this footage never happened — or at least not the way it is presented.

In its assessment published on May 10, the Institute for the Study of War documented what it described as a significant escalation in Russia’s cognitive warfare campaign, noting a surge in AI-generated videos purportedly showing Russian forces raising flags in multiple sectors along the frontline. The think tank linked the intensification directly to the slowdown in Russian territorial advances and to the Kremlin’s need to project momentum ahead of the May 9th Victory Day celebrations in Moscow. 

From Smartphone Clips to Coordinated AI Production

The tactic itself is not new, but its sophistication has evolved considerably. According to ISW, Russian forces began relying heavily on filmed flag-raising operations in the summer of 2025, after shifting to infiltration tactics – small assault groups moving through gaps in Ukrainian defensive lines, planting a flag, filming it, and withdrawing. The footage was then used by Russian military command to assert territorial control in areas where no enduring position had been established.

What changed over the following months was the production quality. ISW described the shift in precise terms: “Russia increased the complexity of these videos over the last several months, beginning to produce more complex, higher-production edited montages throughout numerous locations in winter 2025 compared to previous shorter one-off videos.” The most recent phase involves the use of artificial intelligence to generate or augment footage entirely, creating material that is harder to verify and easier to distribute at scale.

Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation flagged one concrete example last week: a video circulated by Russian sources claiming to show soldiers of Ukraine’s 81st Air Assault Brigade surrendering and raising a Russian flag in the village of Pyskunivka in the Donetsk region. The CCD established that the address reportedly delivered by Ukrainian servicemembers in the footage had been generated using AI. Ukraine’s UNITED24 Media also reported the case, noting that the CCD rejected the footage as fabricated in its entirety.

The CCD described the broader production pipeline in detail. Infiltration teams plant a flag and film briefly, then propagandists supplement the raw footage with artificially generated elements — backgrounds, troop movements, contextual detail — to manufacture the impression of a large-scale operation. Previously, Russian sources distributed short and isolated videos. They have now moved to complex AI editing, producing the entire series of clips in which Russian flags are allegedly raised over Ukrainian Armed Forces positions across different sections of the front. After verification, the CCD established, the footage was either “entirely generated or taken out of context, and the real footage originated from other locations and periods”.

Victory Day as a Deadline

The timing of the recent surge is telling. ISW assessed that Russian sources released much of the AI-generated footage in the days immediately preceding May 9, suggesting the campaign was designed to compensate for the absence of real battlefield breakthroughs ahead of Russia’s most symbolically charged annual event.

The Kremlin has consistently used Victory Day as a moment to demonstrate military strength and political resolve. This year’s parade in Moscow was notably subdued — scaled back in format, with military equipment absent from the procession. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin framed the exclusion as a deliberate decision to focus resources on the front. The optics, however, reinforced what the battlefield data has been showing for months.

According to Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, Russian forces captured 141 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory in April — the second-lowest monthly figure in more than a year, behind only February’s 126 square kilometres. For a military command that has staked significant domestic credibility on the narrative of relentless advance, those numbers create a problem that AI-generated flag footage is apparently meant to solve.

Putin’s own statements around Victory Day illustrated the same pattern of reality management. At a press conference on May 9, he said the war was “coming to an end” — remarks that Russian state media immediately presented as a definitive declaration rather than a vague assertion, as ISW noted in its assessment. The framing is consistent: when real developments are absent, the information apparatus fills the gap.

Silencing Dissent at Home While Fabricating Victories Abroad

The AI video campaign does not exist in isolation. ISW documented a parallel effort by the Kremlin to consolidate control over the Russian domestic information space — and to punish those within it who stray from the official narrative.

The think tank reported that the administrator of the Russian milblogger Telegram channel Thirteenth, Yegor Guzenko, was transferred to a frontline assault unit on or around April 27 – shortly after he published posts critical of Putin and of Russian internet restrictions. Guzenko had previously been arrested in October 2024 on felony charges following sustained criticism of the Russian Ministry of Defence. According to the channel, he had not recovered from a double leg fracture sustained in March and would very likely not survive the assignment.

A separate case involved Alexey Zemtsov, administrator of the ultranationalist channel Voevoda Veshaet and a former Russian combat helicopter pilot, who was arrested and placed in pre-trial detention after complaining publicly about the equipment he received upon transferring to an assault unit.

The two dynamics — manufacturing victories for external consumption while silencing internal critics — form a coherent picture. The Kremlin is not simply producing propaganda; it is simultaneously closing off the domestic channels through which the gap between that propaganda and reality might become visible.

What the Campaign Is Actually Trying to Do

ISW put it plainly in its assessment: “The Kremlin continues to engage in a systematic cognitive warfare effort to aggrandise Russian advances through exaggerated claims of gains and flag-raising infiltration missions in an attempt to portray them as a sweeping, broad-front advance to falsely portray the frontline as collapsing across the theatre, contrary to all available evidence.”

The CCD was equally direct. The videos are designed to create an illusion of a “frontline collapse” that does not correspond to the real situation, manufacturing the perception of success in the virtual space that Russia cannot demonstrate in the physical one.

The increased sophistication of the operation carries its own analytical signal. ISW was direct about what it implies: “The increased sophistication and use of artificial intelligence in these videos suggest that the Kremlin is engaging in a coordinated campaign to support the higher Russian military command’s informational efforts.” This is not freelance military milblogger content, but a directed information effort tied to the Russian high command’s strategic messaging.

The campaign also reflects a calculated understanding of how modern information environments work. In a conflict where territorial claims are difficult to verify independently, footage circulated on Telegram by military-linked channels can establish perceived facts faster than official rebuttals can reach the same audiences. TVP World noted that analysts see the fabricated videos as designed to boost Russian domestic morale, influence public perception, and apply psychological pressure on Ukrainian defenders — three distinct targets within a single information product.

Ukraine’s institutional response — CCD debunks, coordinated fact-checks, and Ukrainian General Staff loss tallies — addresses the verification gap but operates at a different speed than the initial distribution. The Kremlin, for now, appears to be betting that the lag is enough.