ty bake!
Nothing to see here…move along…
Russian precision strike supposedly destroyed an underground "NATO command center" in Ukraine earlier this month, with "dozens" of Western officers and military personnel purportedly killed in the "Kinzhal" (or "Dagger) missile attack.
At least, that is the claim circulating on some social media channels, including those known for spreading pro-Kremlin talking points and Russian propaganda.
In some cases the claim was supported by a photo of the supposed strike site, showing large-scale devastation and a burned-down building.
But is there any factual basis to the claim? Newsweek Misinformation Watch pulled at the threads—and found that most of the elements and sources contained in the claim do not stand up to scrutiny.
Several Twitter and Telegram posts, totaling hundreds of thousands of views in late March 2023, purported that a NATO HQ in Ukraine was destroyed, with "up to 300 people" killed in the strike.
"A terrifying strike of the Russian supersonic missile 'Dagger' at a depth of 130 meters on the NATO command center in Ukraine!": Greek Pronews writes about the huge losses among NATO officers as a result of the missile attack,"
…Misinformation Watch has not been able to find any authoritative sources or reliable evidence that would corroborate the unsourced Telegram claims and ProNews' reporting (and the dissemination of this narrative by Russian state-linked sources raises further suspicions).
While that does not entirely rule out the possibility that such a hit took place, there is little evidence to suggest that it did. Furthermore, the scale of the purported casualties (up to 300 people, according to some of the reports) would have been very difficult to conceal, especially if the vast majority of them had been Western nations' citizens.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-nato-ukraine-command-center-strike-kinzhal-missile-1791805