In a viral video on Chinese social media platform Douyin, a man dressed in military uniform addresses his fans from the wilderness. “Hello, friends from China! We are currently at a nuclear power plant in Kharkiv. After battling the U.S. Marines, we have successfully occupied this place,” the bald, bearded, ethnically ambiguous man says in Chinese. “The red flag will never fall. Ura!”
Pavel Korchatie, the man in the video, rose to fame on Douyin by claiming to be a soldier fighting on the front lines of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In his videos, delivered in Chinese with a foreign accent, he recounted his experiences fighting U.S. soldiers, waxed poetic on the importance of Sino-Russian friendship, and bashed the U.S. as their common enemy. Nine months after its launch, his account garnered over 380,000 followers on Douyin. He launched his own e-commerce business on the platform, selling Russian products such as honey and powdered milk.
But in June, sharp-eyed Douyin users discovered that Pavel was actually Chinese, and had used a filter to make his face look more Caucasian. They claimed that the factories, highways, and “forts” from his videos were actually backdrops from the outskirts of China’s Henan province, where his IP address is located. His name was a play on Pavel Korchagin, the protagonist of How the Steel Was Tempered, a Soviet novel well-known among Chinese readers. Shortly after, Douyin banned his account for disseminating false information.
Pavel is one of several pseudo-Russian influencers who have risen to popularity on Douyin since the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war. Russian Nana, a Chinese influencer from Hubei, poses as a Russian woman on the platform, sharing her love for Chinese culture. Sichuan Putin, a bald man dressed in a suit and sunglasses, shares videos of himself impersonating Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their content — often jingoistic, pro-Russia, and anti-U.S. — taps into the rise in nationalist sentiment on Chinese social media.
Pavel’s videos, for example, are filled with false tales from the battlefield. In the videos, he boasts about allegedly dismantling an American tank, clashing with the U.S. Cavalry’s 1st Division, seizing an M911 handgun, and capturing a U.S. military advisor near a Ukrainian nuclear power plant. Each video always ends with Russian victory and American defeat. The U.S. has stated that it has no combat forces conducting operations in Ukraine.
While some social media users quickly saw Pavel as parody, others took the influencer at face value, praising him as a hero. “Please take care and be safe, brother from Russia!” commented a user called Liao Fan Xin Liao Yu. “Come visit China sometime. Long live Russia-China friendship!”
Russian Nana, an influencer from Hubei province posing as a Russian woman, went viral on Douyin early last year. On her account, she discussed her alleged Russian heritage, sold Russian products to her more than 1.95 million followers via her online store, and performed Chinese folk songs. “Even if you own no property and have no money, you can marry a Russian woman,” she told her fans in one popular video. “Just buy some vodka and honey from my store, and gift them to your Russian father-in-law.”
Fans discovered that her blonde hair and blue eyes were the result of Douyin filters, the “Russian” that she claimed to speak was actually gibberish, and that her Chinese would suddenly improve when she was singing. She was banned from the platform in April 2022 — along with three other fake Russian accounts — for “fabricating a false persona,” as part of Douyin’s efforts to curb the misuse of face-changing filters. The influencer behind Russian Nana soon created a new account, called “Big China Nana,” reinventing herself as an electropop singer named Na Yina.
Pro-Russian nationalist sentiment has been prevalent on Chinese social media since the Russia-Ukraine war began, and has given rise to this particular wave of digital influencer-entrepreneurs, Maria Repnikova, a professor of Chinese and Russian political communications at Georgia State University, told Rest of World.
A video posted by Sichuan Putin, a popular Putin impersonator, shows himself imitating the Russian president’s walking style — right arm held rigid while left arm swings freely. The clip has accumulated over 81,000 likes on Douyin. A viral livestream by a Jiangsu-based influencer named Homecoming Driver — a look-alike of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — shows him meeting a look-alike of Russian General Zelimkhan Kadryov. Users demanded in the comments section that “Zelenskyy” admit defeat.
Thanks to growing nationalist sentiment on the Chinese internet, Russian military content has also become increasingly popular on Douyin. The hashtag #Wula, a transliteration of the Russian military chant “Ura,” has hit 3.7 billion views every day for the past month, according to Newrank, a Chinese media analytics site. The remixed version of “Moskau,” a dance song by German group Dschinghis Khan that celebrates the culture and history of Moscow, has gone viral since it was used as background music for military videos on Douyin.
On the Chinese internet, content about the war in Ukraine is not only militaristic, but also often misogynistic, Repnikova told Rest of World. “Ukraine is often positioned as a passive actor, responding to incursions from powerful states like Russia and the United States,” she said, noting that this passivity is often associated with femininity. Since the outbreak of the war, jokes about “sheltering homeless Ukranian girls” have proliferated on Chinese social media. On the account of Ukranian Anna, a Ukrainian singer living in Suzhou, one user commented, “We Chinese men will save you from war.”
Even actual Russian influencers are jumping on the bandwagon to capitalize on the rising online nationalism. Vladislav Kokolevskyi, a former student at Beijing Language and Culture University, is known as “FuLaFu”’ to his Chinese audience. He posts videos on Douyin talking about his love for China and his dreams of getting a “Chinese green card” one day.
“I came to China when I was 17. I studied here, traveled here, got married here, and started a business here,” he said in a video. “Everything I have is in China. I will never leave China!”
