Russian state TV broadcasts a computer game video as footage from the war in Syria

Russian network television aired a screenshot from the computer game “Arma 3” in a segment about the war in Syria on Sunday. The channel’s press office says the image was broadcast due to an “editing mistake.”

On February 25, Pervyi Kanal aired a segment dedicated to Alexander Prokhorenko, a Russian soldier killed fighting in Syria in 2016 and posthumously awarded the title Hero of Russia. The computer game scene showed military hardware on fire and the caption: “Case file: Syria.” (Skip to 2:35 in the video below to see the footage.)

Bohemia Interactive, which designed Arma 3, told the magazine RBC that it did not grant permission to Pervyi Kanal to use footage from its game.

• In mid-November 2017, the Russian Defense Ministry published (and later deleted) “irrefutable evidence that U.S. is actually covering ISIS combat units to recover their combat capabilities, redeploy, and use them to promote American interests in Middle East,” sharing on social media several black-and-white photos. Moscow initially claimed the images were recorded on November 9 near the city of Abu Kamal in Syria.
• One of the photos published by the Defense Ministry, however, was actually a screenshot from the mobile video game “AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron.” Moscow later blamed a civilian employee for the mistake.