My finger hovered over the mouse as I briefly considered retweeting the “Battle of Snake Island” footage. You may have seen it; you may have retweeted it yourself. It was, apparently, the last moments alive of 13 heroic Ukrainian soldiers, with a Russian ship demanding surrender, and the imperishable Ukrainian response, “Russian warship, go fuck yourself”. The coda: all 13 had immediately been killed by a Russian bombardment.
But while my finger hovered, I did not retweet to my nearly 200,000 followers. Why not? There was something a bit too perfect about the tiny tale of courage and atrocity, and I had no way of knowing whether any of it was true. For all I knew, the photograph was taken in Shetland and the conversation was audio from a Romanian pizza advert.
After a few days it became clear that while the exchange was genuine, the coda was not. The defiant soldiers had been captured alive. The Russians had said so all along; even a stopped clock is right twice a day.