Deepfakes Of Jaishankar, Lavrov Fuel False Claims Of India-Russia Rift
BOOM found that neither Indian nor Russian foreign minister made the remarks attributed to them.
Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan recently shared a deepfake of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, falsely claiming that Lavrov said Russia's commercial relationship with India does not give India the right to interfere in its foreign policy.
Another video of Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is also being circulated, purportedly showing him expressing disappointment over disrespectful remarks made by a Russian minister.
BOOM found both the videos to be deepfake. In the original videos, neither Lavrov nor Jaishankar made the remarks attributed to them.
The videos are being circulated across social media platforms amid rising geopolitical tensions, with Russia engaged in a war with Ukraine and the US involved in a military confrontation with Iran in West Asia. BOOM has debunked several similar deepfake videos of Indian officials that surfaced online during India's military conflict with Pakistan, Operation Sindoor.
Claim 1: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says India's commercial ties with Russia do not give it the right to interfere in Moscow's foreign policy
Prashant Bhushan shared the video with the caption, "A tight slap by the Russian Foreign Minister on India. What kind of advice was Jaishankar giving to Russia?"
In the video, Lavrov appears to say that the commercial relationship does not give India the right to interfere in Russia's foreign policy or advise it on matters involving Russia, Ukraine, the United States, or any other country.
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What We Found: We extracted keyframes from the viral video and ran a reverse image search using Google Lens, which led us to the original video uploaded by YouTube channel M World on October 31, 2026. In the original footage, Lavrov responds to questions about reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin is reluctant to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
We further examined the livestream of Lavrov's press conference following the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Atlanta on October 30, 2026, and found no such remarks in his address. The transcript of his speech is available on the Russian Foreign Ministry's official website.
For further verification, we also analysed the video using Hive's AI detector and Resemble AI's voice detector. Both tools flagged the video as AI-manipulated.
Claim 2: Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar says he is deeply disappointed by the Russian minister's sarcastic and disrespectful response to his call for peace
X handle @BabaThokaIndia shared the video with the caption, "We urged Russia and Ukraine to recognize that wars bring no benefits, only economic damage. I am deeply disappointed and saddened by the Russian minister’s sarcastic and disrespectful response to my call for peace. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India's Minister of External Affairs"
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What We Found: We extracted keyframes from the viral video and ran a reverse image search, which led us to the original news report shared by news agency ANI on its official X handle on November 1, 2026. The original footage shows External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar making no such remarks, but speaking about his previous discussions with his Russian counterpart on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
For further confirmation, we checked the video using Hive AI detector and Resemble AI's voice detector both of which confirmed the video is a deepfake.
