Russia uses video game footage to accuse US of aiding ISIS

A photo tweeted by the Russian Ministry of Defense Tuesday as “irrefutable” proof that the United States has allied with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria turned out to be from a video game.

Early Tuesday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry tweeted what appeared to be aerial photos of a convoy of vehicles traveling on a dirt road. 

“This is the irrefutable evidence that there is no struggle against terrorism as the whole global community believes. The US are actually covering the ISIS combat units to recover their combat capabilities, redeploy, and use them to promote the American interests in the Middle East,” it wrote in the English version of the tweet posted in both English and Russian, as captured on archive.org.

The @mod_russia uses images from a computer game as evidence the US is working with ISIS https://t.co/8uv2vbEHeQ pic.twitter.com/EvqP1Id5pR

— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) November 14, 2017

Twitter users quickly noticed one of the images used as evidence came from another source — a YouTube video of gameplay from the mobile phone video game “AC-130 Gunship Simulator.”

In that image, the Ministry of Defense did not cut out all of the text from the trailer, which clarified: “Development footage. This is a work in progress. All content is subject to change. The image clearly contains a piece of the words “All content.”

Another image appears to be taken from an old Iraqi Ministry of Defense video.

Another alleged @mod_russia drone image accusing US of cooperating with IS was taken from a June 2016 Iraqi MoD video showing Iraqi Air Force bombing IS near Fallujah https://t.co/ybRbuAxA6w
(via @uckuduk1) pic.twitter.com/MtzjqAAStW

— CIT (en) (@CITeam_en) November 14, 2017

The Russian Ministry of Defense has since deleted its tweet.