Three Tennessee National Guard members Russian state media falsely claimed were killed in action as “mercenaries” in the Donetsk breakaway region of Eastern Ukraine are very much alive and well in their home state says a National Guard spokesperson, NBC News reports. “The Tennessee Guard is aware of the fake news coming out of Russia,” said Tracy O’Grady, a Pentagon spokesperson for all National Guard detachments. The Guard members were deployed to Ukraine on a training mission in 2018, the Pentagon suspects at some point which their personal info and images were collected by pro-Russian agents and used in the propaganda this week.

“They are accounted for, safe and not, as the article headline erroneously states, US mercenaries killed in Donetsk People’s Republic. All members of the Tennessee National Guard returned safely to their home state in 2019 after a successful mission,” the Tennessee National Guard said in a statement. No American military personnel are publicly acknowledged to be on the ground in Ukraine currently in officially sanctioned operations. Russia will have to work harder to find them if there are any there. An unknown number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have signed up to join Ukraine’s foreign volunteer legion, however, and if any of those soldiers are killed or captured in action it’s likely the Russians will use that as “evidence” of direct American intervention.