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GeoConfirmed UKR - Investigation When Ukraine undertakes offensive operations, Russia attempts to manipulate/influence the information environment. For nearly three years, we have been monitoring the war in Ukraine, and another notable trend has emerged: whenever Ukraine initiates an offensive operation, social media becomes inundated with claims of significant Ukrainian losses. However, we have observed that these claims often consist of disinformation: they may reference outdated losses, incidents from different regions, or even Russian losses reported as Ukrainian losses... (I kid you not). This misinformation is often compiled in a way that suggests Ukraine's offensive efforts are failing, thereby attempting to sway public perception. Recently, as Ukraine commenced an offensive operation (January 4th, 2025), again bold claims were made about Ukrainian losses. We took a few days to investigate two specific assertions: one from a relatively small account named @NewRulesGeo and another from 'North Wind,' a Russian channel associated with the military. The thread by NewRulesGeo garnered over 4 million views, while the post by North Wind attracted nearly 100,000 views on Telegram. As anticipated, the reality is not as it appears. For an account calling itself NewRulesGeo, it is striking that the individual does not grasp that geolocation is accurate. A significant portion of their thread is unrelated to the newly launched Kursk operation; it includes either older footage, irrelevant content, or different videos of the same vehicle being attacked while implying they depict different vehicles, and they guess the outcome of strikes without any proof. Some of the footage was indeed from the recent Ukrainian offensive operations in Kursk Oblast, and by mixing it with unrelated material, they attempt to enhance their credibility. This is a well-known technique in spreading disinformation: combining accurate information with falsehoods. People tend to recognize the accurate claims and, as a result, may assign greater credibility to the entire narrative, including the disinformation. Regarding the North Wind post, the considerable number of vehicles shown at the end of their video are actually Russian vehicles destroyed in mid-December. They misrepresent their own losses as Ukrainian losses. We prefer not to invest too much time in debunking disinformation, as a lie can be made in just a few minutes, but the debunking can cost you days. For example, this fact-check took us several days and the effort of a few dedicated volunteers. I want to thank volunteers @giK1893, @99Dominik_, @moklasen and @GeoRaccoon for their geolocation work, making this thread possible. We hope our fact-checking thread receives more than 4 million views, because mis-/ and disinformation is a plague on X and Facts DO Matter. 1/20