The story is entirely invented: no credible source has reported such an attack.
A 12-minute video is circulating widely across the pro-Russian segment of social media, describing a purported Russian submarine attack on a barge carrying Leopard tanks near the Romanian city of Constanța. As many as 70 tanks bound for Ukraine supposedly went down, and the submarine, the story goes, could not be intercepted.
At the time of publication the original post had gathered nearly two thousand likes and more than 150 comments — but the story in the video is entirely fabricated and is not supported by any credible source. No foreign, Ukrainian or even mainstream Russian outlet has reported an attack on a barge carrying Leopard tanks in Romania. The fake originated with a Facebook profile called Media Gastilo, which posts formulaic videos styled as television news several times a day. “Turning point,” “a strike on Berlin is being prepared,” “Putin gave the most terrifying interview of his life” — with headlines and themes like these, the page’s authors try to goad the audience into engaging with the content through likes, shares and comments. In reality the videos carry no channel or outlet logo at all, and the presenter’s face, the scripts and the voiceover are generated with artificial intelligence. The low-quality output — so-called “AI slop” — deals mostly in invented Russian victories and dramatic turns in the war. The very next day after this fake went out, the profile posted another segment, again about Russia destroying “70 tanks” — this time not on a barge, but concealed within a humanitarian convoy.
Constanța was not chosen as the fake’s setting by accident. In March 2024, reports emerged of the start of a major expansion of the Mihail Kogălniceanu air base near the Black Sea city. Once construction is complete, it is to become NATO’s largest base in Europe, surpassing the American base at Ramstein in Germany. The base will cover 3,000 hectares with a perimeter of roughly 30 km, and the expansion is estimated at 2.5 billion euros, with work slated for completion by 2030. It will be able to house up to 10,000 military and civilian personnel from the alliance’s 32 member states, and part of the logistics operation and staff will be relocated there from Ramstein. Plans call for stationing Romanian F-16s and MQ-9 Reaper drones at the base and for building a full “military town” with kindergartens, schools, shops and a hospital. Russia has predictably criticized the expansion, calling it evidence of the “unrestrained militarization of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region.”
In reality, Ukraine recently took delivery — successfully and without incident — of its first Skyranger 35 air defense systems, built by Rheinmetall on the chassis of the Leopard 1 tank. The supply contract was signed in the second half of 2025, and the financing came from an EU country using revenues from frozen Russian assets under the windfall-profits mechanism; the order is worth several hundred million euros, and production and assembly were carried out at the Rheinmetall Italia plant in Rome. Unlike the earlier wheeled-chassis version that Rheinmetall had previously supplied to Ukraine, the tracked Leopard 1-based version offers armored protection and cross-country mobility, allowing the system to operate directly in the front-line zone. Tellingly, Ukraine received the system even before Germany itself, which has ordered 19 Skyranger units for its own armed forces.
We have previously debunked similar narratives, including claims that posters appeared at Stuttgart airport urging the government “not to hand tanks over to Ukraine” and that Leopards and Bradleys are being withdrawn to the Volyn region after serious losses.
