No, image doesn’t show ‘American mercenaries’ in Russia | Fact check

An Aug. 13 post (directlink, archive link) on X, formerly Twitter, shows two camouflaged soldiers near the body of a fallen soldier. A U.S. flag patch is prominently visible on one soldier.
“American mercenaries exposed invading Russia’s Kursk region,” reads the post.
It was reposted nearly 2,000 times in three days. Similar posts were shared on Facebook.
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The image has been online for nearly two years, long before Ukraine’s offensive in Russian territory. It has appeared alongside reports of the Ukrainian city of Balakliya being reclaimed by Ukrainian soldiers.
In early August, Ukraine launched an offensive across Russia’s border in the Kursk region, seizing territory, capturing enemy soldiers and disrupting supply lines. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the offensive would create a “buffer zone on the aggressor’s territory,” and that the country’s forces have taken control of 92 settlements and more than 480 square miles in the region.
But the image in the X post predates Ukraine’s recent offensive by almost two years. It has been online since Sept. 8, 2022, when it was posted on Telegram by Ukrainian journalist Denys Kazanskyi with a caption that reads, “Balakliya is Ukraine,” a reference to a city in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
The same image was posted online in September 2022 by two Ukrainian news outlets, Apostrophe and Slovo i Dilo, with accounts of Balakliya being retaken by Ukrainian soldiers.
Apostrophe’s report describes the image as a “telling photo in which two soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are taking a ‘selfie’ against the background of an ‘orc’ lying on the ground,” according to Google Translate.
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At the time, a Ukrainian counteroffensive had prompted Russia to withdraw troops from parts of the Kharkiv region, including Balakliya, the Associated Press reported. Zelenskyy visited Balakliya days after it was reclaimed by Ukrainian forces.
While it’s unclear why the soldier in the image has a U.S. flag patch, a July 2023 CNN report describes a different Ukrainian soldier with a U.S. flag patch given to him by an American military trainer in Germany. The U.S. and its partners had, as of February, trained more than 123,000 Ukrainians in more than 80 places around the world – including in Germany. The U.S. alone had trained about 19,000 Ukrainian soldiers on “combined arms, specific combat platforms and staff and leadership skills,” according to the Defense Department.
The U.S. hasn’t sent its troops to fight in Ukraine, but some U.S. military veterans have volunteered on their own, according to multiple news outlets. At least 50 U.S. citizens have died in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022, according to a list compiled from public sources by Task and Purpose, an independent military publication.
The social media user who shared the post could not be reached for comment.
Lead Stories and Check Your Fact also debunked the claim.
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