With the ongoing Russian military operations in Ukraine intensifying, a lot of images and videos are being circulated on social media and in mainstream media claiming to be representative of the current crisis. Many fact-checking outlets have pointed out that a lot of the imagery is old and unrelated.
A video is now being circulated with the claim that it is the “real footage” of the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is a 2 minutes 16 seconds video that shows the cameraperson moving around and filming a lot of injured and dead soldiers lying on the ground.
Several accounts on Twitter have tweeted this clip with similar captions. A Twitter user named @Fluro_NZ shared this video and gained over 2.7 lakh views before taking down his tweet.
Several other users on Twitter have also shared the same video.
Putin and lukashenko should stand up for it #russia #putin #war #Ukraine #WarCrime pic.twitter.com/XLPtmZkNNN
— Michael Stb (@michaelstb558) February 24, 2022
This video has also been shared on YouTube by a number of accounts.
Hashtags like #UkraineInvasion #UkraineUnderAttack are also being used to share the video.
CLIP FROM SEPTEMBER 2014
Upon reverse searching keyframes from the video, it was found that these visuals are actually from the aftermath of an ambush on Ukro-Nationalist volunteer battalion Aidar on September 6, 2014. Bodies of nearly 40 soldiers were retrieved.
Several videos from the incident are available on YouTube with the watermark of Cassad TV. Upon further research, Alt News found that Cassad TV is actually run by Boris Rozhin, who also runs a popular blog called Colonel Cassad.
One such video on YouTube was uploaded on November 5, 2014 with similar visuals as the video that is being circulated on Twitter right now.
Below we have added screenshots from the viral video on the left and screenshots from the YouTube video on the right. Evidently, both are the same.
Thus, a 2014 video has been falsely linked to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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