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Reported Deepfakes of Ukrainian Deputy PM Olha Stefanishyna Allegedly Supporting Fictional Mobilization Plan for Women

2 news reports Synced from source · record last edited 5 Sep 2026

In brief

An AI system built by Synthetic video generation technology developers, Synthetic media generation technology developers and 2 others and deployed by Synthetic media creators, Russian Telegram channels and 5 others allegedly harmed Women of Ukraine, Women and girls and 10 others.

Risk domain
Malicious Actors & Misuse Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale
Occurred
Coverage
2 reportsJun 2025

What happened

In late June 2025, Russian Telegram channels reportedly circulated deepfake videos claiming that Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna backed mandatory mobilization of up to one million Ukrainian women starting September 1. Officials reportedly debunked the claim, confirming no such plans or laws exist. The disinformation operation reportedly aimed to incite panic and destabilize Ukraine's domestic situation.

Laws that address this harm

Policy angle: Classified under Malicious Actors & Misuse (Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 5 recorded instruments address this use case.

Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).

News reports (2)

Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.

  1. New fake of ru-propaganda about the mobilisation of women in Ukraine
    cpd.gov.ua · Center for Countering Disinformation
  2. Russian propagandists spread rumors about the mobilization of women in Ukraine: CPD debunked another fake
    unn.ua · UNN, Pavlo Zinchenko

Who was involved

Alleged harmed party
Women of Ukraine Women and girls Women Public figures Politicians in Ukraine Politicians Olha Stefanishnyna National security and intelligence stakeholders Government of Ukraine General public of Ukraine General public Epistemic integrity

AI systems implicated

TelegramSynthetic video generation technologySynthetic media generation technologySynthetic audio generation technologySocial media platformsDeepfake technology

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Causal entity
AI
Intent
Intentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm level
—
Sectors
—
Countries
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Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.1.

  • Political manipulation

    "Political manipulation - Use or misuse of personal data to target individuals’ interests, personalities and vulnerabilities with tailored political messages via micro-advertising or deepfakes/synthetic media."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Coercion/manipulation

    "Coercion/manipulation - Use of a technology system to covertly alter user beliefs and behaviour using nudging, dark patterns and/or other opaque techniques, resulting in potential erosion of privacy, addiction, anxiety/...

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Political and Economic

    "Political and Economic - Manipulation of political beliefs, damage to political institutions and the effective delivery of government services."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Electoral interference

    "Electoral interference - Generation of false or misleading information that can interrupt or mislead voters and/or undermine trust in electoral processes."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Political

    "In the UK, a form of initial computational propaganda has already happened during the Brexit referendum1 . In future, there are concerns that oppressive governments could use AI to shape citizens’ opinions"

    The Rise of Artificial Intelligence - Future Outlooks and Emerging Risks (Allianz2018)

  • Biased influence through citizen screening and tailored propaganda

    "AI-powered chatbots tailor their communication approach to influence individual users' decisions. In the UK, a form of initial computational propaganda has already happened during the Brexit referendum. In future, there...

    The Rise of Artificial Intelligence - Future Outlooks and Emerging Risks (Allianz2018)

  • Surveillance and Censorship

    "Content moderation has emerged as one of the key use-cases of LLMs (Weng et al., 2023), indicating the potential of LLMs for surveillance and censorship as well (Edwards, 2023). Surveillance and censorship are one of th...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

  • Disinformation and manipulation of public opinion

    "AI, particularly general- purpose AI, can be maliciously used for disinformation (351), which for the purpose of this report refers to false information that was generated or spread with the deliberate intent to mislead...

    International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI (Bengio2024)

Linked by editors or by text similarity in the source dataset.

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain

Other incidents involving Synthetic media creators

Source record: incident #1134 on the AI Incident Database · all 2 reports