The clip bearing the Euronews logo that spread online turned out to be a forgery. The incident was denied by both Latvia’s National Armed Forces and the Ukrainian embassy in the country.
Claims are circulating online — mostly in the form of a news segment carrying the Euronews logo — that during the Baltic Trust 26 military exercises in Latvia, a Ukrainian serviceman shot and killed three NATO soldiers and then took his own life.
The story is untrue, and the clip circulating online is a fake. Euronews published nothing about a shooting incident at NATO exercises in Latvia, as a simple keyword search of its site confirms. What is more, the story was promptly refuted by Latvia’s National Armed Forces, which called the injection “another attempt to discredit the Latvian Armed Forces and NATO” and noted that the information was spread largely by X profiles with low organic engagement: while some of the accounts had substantial follower counts and verification badges, users interacted with the posts very little, rarely liking or sharing them. That points to accounts that do not belong to real people but form part of a propaganda network designed to flood the information space with precisely this kind of fake. In reality, according to Latvia’s National Armed Forces, Baltic Trust 26 passed without incident. Ukraine’s embassy in Latvia issued a similar statement: “The Embassy of Ukraine strongly condemns attempts to exploit the participation of Ukrainian servicemen in international military exercises for the creation and dissemination of false narratives aimed at misleading the public, undermining trust in official sources of information, and discrediting cooperation between Ukraine, Latvia, and NATO Allies,” the diplomatic mission said.
The Baltic Trust 26 (BATT26) exercises took place from Aug. 3 to 14, 2026, at a Latvian military training area in the south of the country, organized by Latvia’s Armed Forces together with the NATO Communications and Information Agency. Roughly 650 personnel from alliance member states took part, along with Ukraine, Australia and Japan. The main focus was integrated counter-drone operations: rehearsing drone-suppression tactics in real-world conditions, testing the interoperability of different systems and coordinating between operators and command elements. The exercises were a logical continuation of the Technical Interoperability Exercise (TIE 26), held in May in the Netherlands, where 40 companies from 11 allied countries tested more than 60 commercial counter-drone systems — those that made the cut earned the right to take part in BATT26. The key practical outcome was the standardization of counter-drone tactics and procedures across the alliance, drawing on the experience of the war in Ukraine, where the use of interception systems has evolved considerably.
We have debunked similar disinformation in Fake: Ukraine Halts Overseas Military Training Over Desertion Concerns and Fake: NATO Instructors will Train Drafting Office Employees to Use Israeli Hand-to-Hand Combat System.
