The CNN report on this matter is entirely fabricated, and no other U.S. news outlet has published similar claims.
Several Russian outlets, referencing a supposed CNN segment, claimed that Donald Trump had deployed National Guard units to Alaska in response to large-scale protests by the Ukrainian diaspora ahead of his August 15 meeting with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage.
The video circulated by Russian outlets is entirely fabricated. Propagandists spliced fragments of a genuine CNN broadcast with fake captions and stock footage. The clip does not appear on CNN’s official website or YouTube channel. Several details reveal the forgery: the on-screen font is inconsistent with CNN’s standard style, the anchor’s voice has been artificially generated, and most footage lacks proper source attribution, which CNN always provides in its reports.
No U.S. media reported any National Guard deployment to Alaska. The only recent deployment involved 800 troops summoned to Washington, D.C., which Trump framed as a “fight against crime.” The Washington Post characterized the move as “an exertion of executive power never before attempted by any U.S. president in modern history.” It appears Russian propagandists repurposed this real event to fabricate a narrative about the National Guard being used against Ukrainian protesters in Alaska.
StopFake previously debunked a related disinformation story alleging that pro-Ukrainian rallies in the U.S. were orchestrated by criminal gangs.
