How a Ukrainian Fake Confirms Russia on ZNPP Invasion Claims

October 28, 2022 

The Energodar "Dead Commandos" video was briefly posted as proof that Ukrainian forces had staged a brazen assault on the Russian-held city surrounding Europe's largest nuclear reactor. Some retracted that in embarrassment when the video was revealed to be a hoax. In this post, I aim to reclaim this hoax video as evidence in the same case, but from another direction.

Invasion: Energodar - a Real Assault or a Staged Play? 

In the hours before a high-level team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was to visit, Early on September 1, a battle broke out at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and the surrounding city of Energodar (or Enohodar). Ukrainian special forces allegedly crossed the Dnipro river and opened fire on Russian forces, trying to seize control of the area. It was surmised that Kiev's plan was to reclaim the nuclear plant, curtail the IAEA investigation there, and then use the agency's stay-on team as human shields while they launch attacks from the plant. Maybe they just wanted the ensuing battle to force the team back for their own safety and keep them from investigating the signs of Ukrainian shelling of the plant, as the Russians had requested. 

The importance of this allegation is highlighted by another alleged invasion attempt, on October 19 amid intensified Ukrainian shelling that knocked out power and water to the city. (RIA Novosti - RT) ...

Compiled reports at Athens News explain the September attack, as reported by pro-Russian local sources. Some 60 Ukrainian special forces operatives landed overnight "in the area of dachas north-east of the ZNPP and secretly occupied the initial lines of attack by 5 o'clock in the morning." That was when Ukrainian artillery opened fire on Russian forces at the ZNPP, hoping to crack the shell and let the commandos in. A larger second wave had set out from Nikopol in 2 barges to reinforce them, but Russian aircraft sunk these en route, "after which the entire capture plan was foiled, and part of the advanced assault group withdrew to the landing site, where it was pressed to the ground" and by 11 AM "now it is being finished off there." They also managed to squeeze in a shelling attack on "the alleged point of crossing the front by the IAEA mission." It sounds like no one escaped.

A crude mapping of the claims that came with this report, English labels added by me (black circle, "unknown wave" - see below):

Boris Rogozin "At the moment, 47 DRG fighters (infiltrators) have been killed, three have been taken prisoner (!), two are in serious condition between life and death. A group of 12 people is blocked on three sides and cut off from the water and boats, by 15:00 WHO will be finished. The operation was coordinated by MI6 officers from their headquarters in the suburbs of Kiev. All 64 people from the DRG have recently been trained in the UK and travelled from Warsaw to Odessa on 29 August." 

Add 10/29: AyazK tipped me off to a Rybar analysis including of barges used in the landing. Their infographic includes a view of one barge shown only half sunk and pouring smoke at the shore (mapped some ways west of the ZNPP - geolocation tweet), while another view they have claims to show one of several killed Ukrainian soldiers who washed up on the Nikopol shore. These 2 images are cropped together at right. 

Rybar also shows satellite images of two barges supposedly peeling off, on September 1, from a group of 12 long moored near Nikopol. "This happened for the first time in a year," they say. "With all our skepticism, we do not believe in the version about the insidious Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group that crossed the Dnieper, stole barges in Nikopol and drove them to the south coast to simulate the landing of Ukrainian troops on the south coast." End 10/29

I can't vouch for the details like numbers involved or whose plan it was, nor can I entirely prove there was an assault at all. But as I'll show, there probably was, and Ukraine's denials tend to confirm the fact. We'll need to consider the "Russian account" timeline of the attack:

* 5.20 first SOF team in place, artillery strikes from across the river. "Since 5:20 Energodar was subjected to the most severe artillery fire from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Arrivals were recorded in residential areas, reported dead and wounded civilians." (Rybar) 

* about 6 am the attack of the first wave of troops begins, and a second wave (2 barges) leaves Nikopol, expected arrival around 7.30.

* about 7.00 a.m. and after: "Russian aircraft (or helicopters) sank both barges with the second echelon, after which the entire capture plan was foiled, and part of the advanced assault group withdrew to the landing site, where it was pressed to the ground (now it is being finished off there)." 

* "at 8.00 the artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine shelled the alleged point of crossing the front by the IAEA mission."

* before 8:59: video shows shelling on a street in Energodar on or near the IAEA route (depending what the route actually was)

* by 11 a.m.: the situation apparently settling but still not settled as fuller reports including deaths among the attackers emerge by 11:04, most claiming the violence was ongoing. 

Boris Rogozin at 11:04 AM local time: attack death toll of 47 so far, fighting expected to be done by 3PM. Yury Podolyak at 11:36 claimed "the loss of two platoons of the MTR of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and up to the battalion of the second wave on barges. That is about 300-400 people. Without any result." Telegram: Contact @yurasumy at 11:56 "The Russians, of course, have already liquidated almost all of this Ukrainian landing force. There was no chance of survival. ... this strategy was prepared by NATO experts."

Key details, images and audio posted by the Ukrainian side are largely consistent with these reports even as they disputed the narrative behind the evidence. Video posted at 9:28 and again at 9:28 - shows a tank on Kurchatova Street by city hall (47.4916788,34.6632712), driving NE towards the coast as if for battle there. At 11:16 AM local time, Saint Javelin posted audio from Enegodar sounding like clashes between opposing forces in the near distance. Hromadske at 12:17 PM: Since 5 am "the Russian occupying forces have not stopped constant mortar shelling ... Machine guns can be heard. ... Later, the Mayor announced that the occupiers were firing mortars and machine guns, and involved aviation (helicopters were circling over the city)." The helicopter photo below was included with this tweet (geolocation seems possible, but I leave it to anyone else). 

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric would say of the day's events “We are glad that the Russian Federation did what it needed to do to keep our inspectors safe,” It's not clear if that relates to stopping an alleged effort to seize the plant, or to nothing in particular, but it was read as "UN thanks Russia for keeping nuclear team safe." (RT)

However... Yevhen Yevtushenko, Head of the Nikopol District Military Administration: "the Russian army is shelling Enerhodar ... to create a suitable picture for the IAEA commission and to form a pool of local residents who, under the media’s cameras, inform the commission about the attack on the city from our side of the reservoir." Source: Yevtushenko on Telegram; Dmytro Orlov, Mayor of Enerhodar, on Telegram; Enerhodar City Council on Facebook. (UP)

More to the point: "Russia simulates fighting in Enerhodar by shelling the area near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in order to disrupt a visit by an IAEA team, Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, said." (Euromaidan Press)

Coastal Shelling? 

One interesting angle of this I've been developing is the day's record of shelling attacks. team arrived at the plant - despite the morning's battle - The IAEA's September report (PDF) would fail to mention the battle (or staged performance?), and also notes no shelling or noteworthy developments at the ZNPP on this day. But Ukrainian sources said new "Russian" shelling of the plant triggered the emergency protection system and the 5th power unit was shut down." (Hromadske)  "A shell exploded near the first power unit. It is also reported that the reserve power supply line of the station at 330 kV was broken." (Rybar 9/1 9:28 am) A Sept. 1 Russian news video showed where a "Ukrainian" shell landed near the liquid nitrogen cooling station at the plant's south end, not far from reactor 1 ("first power unit"), blowing a crater in a raised mound, damaging a building to the west and some water pipes overhead. (video - geolocation - small view in the image below). 

This is the only ZNPP strike from the east that I've noticed, and it happened to come on this day when Kiev's forces might have new attack positions including to the east. 

This same morning, prior to a video posting at 8:58 AM local time, a shell was seen hitting a square next to a medical clinic in eastern Energodar (geolocated), from up the street to the northeast (my call). As it happens, it was quite near the IAEA's team's planned roue to the site, and was called a Russian attempt to stop them (Meduza). Podolyak mentioned Ukrainian shelling of "the alleged point of crossing the front by the IAEA mission," but this is probably another spot they'd pass well after "the front." And I'm not sure anyone knows the exact, planned route.

I noticed this trajectory from NE and the one at the plant from the east could well intersect at a coastal spot by Energodar (tweet or see here). Later I noticed another shell that day hit an apartment building across the street from the clinic impact. Hromadske Int. on Twitter. All three of these shells might have been fired from the same spot. One good option is shown below, 1.4 km from the clinic and apartment strikes, 6.8 km from the ZNPP impact. 

Landing sites given by Russian sources don't include this spot, and operational areas aren't clearly described. But maybe there was another landing here they didn't know about, or the ones they did had some guys sent this far in to launch some shells. Maybe the same people also escaped unnoticed and made it back to the north shore.

Kyiv Says it was All Staged, Stages Some "Proof"

It was all a Russian "simulation," according to the President's office, as noted above; "Russia simulates fighting in Enerhodar ... in order to disrupt a visit by an IAEA team" (Euromaidan Press) But the only ones caught simulating anything were some Ukrainian soldiers - likely involved in the real assault - playing dead on a beach. 

They caught themselves, and that was the idea. An edit of their video was posted  - apparently via some fake pro-Russian channel they ran (?), on the day after the assault, September 2. The idea was to trick Russian-affiliated channels into running the video as visual proof for the Russian reports of a foiled offensive

The bait was taken, by at least one channel. As Newsweek reported, Vladislav Pozdnyakov, who runs a right-wing pro-Russian Telegram channel "Male State" passed the video on, but then deleted that after "a Ukrainian channel posted the full video, showing some of the "dead" soldiers stand up, Bellingcat's Aric Toler first reported, noting that the footage was intended to trick Russia." 

New York Post: "it was all a sly ruse to embarrass the enemy. ... And it seems the ruse worked because the edited version of the clip showing the “dead” Ukrainians was picked up by Kremlin propagandist Vladislav Pozdnyakov. Immediately after Toler tweeted about the fake video, Pozdnyakov switched his Telegram channel to private. “Pozdnyakov is annoyed he got faked out,” Toler gloated in a tweet."

The video is viewable here, with some discussion, on Reddit, September 6. Toler has blocked me after ~0 contact, the dude is so "open-source", but ... here's his tweet linking to Pozdnyakov's post and to "The reveal of zombie soldiers from today." (9/6) post link: https://t.me/kristianudarov/855 (not visible to me) by Kristian Udarov, like the video stamp says. Is that the "Ukrainian Flag" conservative party leader? The MMA fighter? All the same? His Youtube channel looking like the fighter, and with patriotic flags. He seems well-connected. Was he involved in this?

AFAIK "Male State" is just as fake as the channel first publishing the video, or Pozdnyakov is not very bright. But either way, "multiple channels" on Telegram and others were fooled, and passed on this hoax video. It got around so that I had seen it on Twitter - in passing - and I didn't doubt it on first glance. I believed the reports of a foiled landing with losses, and this looked like video of that. If I had looked closer, I like to think I'd form doubts - there was not even an effort at fake blood anywhere - did they all suffer heart attacks? 

But others rejected the bait, some of them pointedly so. SITREP on Twitter, Sept 2: "IPsO shot a staged video of the corpses of their yesterday's failed landing party in #Energodar at #ZNPP and started spreading it in 🇷🇺 Telegram feeds. Tomorrow the 🇺🇦 media will start refuting it and accusing the Russians of being fakers." In a second tweet: "the "🇷🇺" cameraman has a GRU commander's watch. In short, it doesn't work, you fools. You don't have to bother with denials, anything is clear." 

Replies largely ridiculed their assessment, like: "Your fake is so fake you had to say it's Ukrainian fake." But it was a Ukrainian fake, although SITREP were wrong about "tomorrow." It was a few days before the hoax was revealed, on or by September 6. Maybe they kept hoping more people would be fooled before they finally had Udarov call time on the operation. 

It was "intended to trick Russia" by showing them to be gullible, and therefore total liars. They nabbed "Male State," a few un-notable others. "It seems the ruse worked." It worked slightly better than the reckless, criminal, and hushed-up assault on Energodar they were probably engaged with just before this video stunt.

How Ukraine's Fake Video Confirms Russian Claims 

We know it was Ukrainian troops who staged this vide. Most of should realize that doesn't mean the whole alleged operation must be a lie. In fact, it might do more to support the "Russian" claims than to discredit them. I had to ask who, when, where, why, and why not.

Who? Russian reports sound like all attackers were killed, captured, or sure to be that way, with none escaped. But there may be a whole landing they didn't know about and some escapes they didn't notice or report, and this might be them. Otherwise, it's other soldiers who went to the shore to play out Russia's claims to make them seem fake. 

The one filming wears a Soviet-themed (costume?) wristwatch. Ukrainian GRU issue like SITREP said? The "killed" are only about six in number (not "3 dozen"). They wear patches someone else knows better. I see a sonnerad (Nazi black sun) on one of them. Similar patches are shown with US cash and such the "killed" were said to have on them. Simple props, obviously. 

When seems easy: it's 11:05 am by that man's watch. But it could be set wrong, and 11:05 on what day? I'm not sure. Is the first postings on Sept. 2 after or before 11:05? Can 9/2 be ruled out? Even if it can't be, I suspect this is filmed on the 1st, as the fighting was wrapping up across the river.

Where: on a washed-out strip of kind of north-south coast. The solar azimuth at that time on September 1 or 2 would be 145° SE (NOAA). This at right isn't exactly how to draw a 145° line, but it should give an idea. The local coastline is on an angle something like 45° different - so the coast here runs south, something like 190°. That's quite approximate, but it helps narrow things down.

To the east is the river with land visible a few kilometers beyond, and to the west, a cut bank all along, with small, dense trees along it - maybe an uphill path to the north - some land and/or larger trees extend out in the water to the north and to the south ... note this panoramic view makes the fairly straight coast seem to curve extremely.

I found no such spot around Energodar on the south bank, but a few possible matches back on the Ukrainian side. This one by Illinka (47.5849009,34.6683481) is the best fit and the closest, due north of Energodar's east coast (2 sub-spots - yellow box below)- trees in the water not so clear here or anywhere, but there are some right at the edge - maybe the water level has risen (but historically it seems quite steady - see Google Earth). A couple of other possible matches on the north shore noted here.

Why? The idea, presumably, was to cast all the Russian allegations as fake by getting them as attached as possible to something that was fake and under their control. But their denials and absurd counter-accusations would have been widely bought anyway, and succeeded well enough without this stunt. The unneeded help just adds to the reasons to believe Ukraine really did launch this brazen assault.

An offensive on Energodar would explain the mortar and rifle fire heard, the tanks and helicopters sent out, and the observed shelling that likely traces back to a coastal landing site. (Add 10/29) It would explain the 2 barges that set out, the one seen half-sunk, and the dead Ukrainian troops washing up. It would explain Kiev's allowance of an IAEA visit that they previously complained "would legitimise Russia's presence" at the ZNPP [Energoatom]. Maybe they meant to end that presence before the visit and have it legitimize their presence instead? 

And the reported offensive ending in deadly failure could explain Ukrainian forces staging this video at that place and at that time.

Allegedly, the assault had been routed, with deaths to explain away, sometime before the earliest report I've seen to mention deaths, at 11:04 am. One minute later, this video was made. Did they rush to the shore to stage this so quickly to discredit even earlier reports they heard? Maybe they already know about the alleged losses because they witnessed them actually occur? If barges were sunk, or the advance team never returned, or both, others would know pretty quickly. Their government couldn't admit to this mission or any related deaths. And they would soon be forced to deny the Russian claims. 

Any mission survivors might have time to discuss this on the crossing back, and decide the first thing they would do back on land is to play dead and make those claims seem fake. And, of course, other comrades on land could decide to do the same. Their bosses might appreciate it, you know, "just in case" the imminent Russian claims weren't fake enough on their own.

Why not? It would be a pretty astounding thing to most people - a plan to snatch a city and a nuclear plant with a military assault just hours before international inspectors were set to arrive. It would endanger or at least disrespect the IAEA, whose Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi headed the team. It would risk forcing them back from their mission just to avoid the new and optional battle zone. Kiev was probably more than willing to risk that. I believe they did risk it, and largely for that reason. 

If they had done all this, we could surmise they have no interest in the truth, and no concern about anyone holding them to account. And true to that form, when their reckless violence was exposed, they resorted to victim-blaming denial and - here - to outright fakery in a "clever ruse" to make the Russians look like the fakers. As often happens, the Ukrainians failed in a ridiculous and criminal mission, and they failed at covering it up. It's only through massive external assistance and international embargoes on truth that this regime in Kiev avoids the embarrassment and accountability it deserves for its ongoing crimes against reality and against Humanity.