A video showing continuous shelling in the night sky is viral with captions falsely claiming that it shows relentless airstrikes amid the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
BOOM found that the video is a digitally created animation and the claims made with posts sharing it are unrelated and false.
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The video is viral in the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and airstrike carried out by the country across Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine.
The 16-second-long video shows shots being fired as airplanes crisscross the sky. There's a siren blaring in the background.
A tweet sharing the video has been captioned 'Reportedly, Russian military helicopter Ka-52 "Alligator" shot down by the Armed Forces of Ukraine could have departed from Belarus's territory'.
Another Twitter user shared the same video with a caption reading 'Right now on west side of Kyiv. Under relentless airstrikes'.
The same video was posted on Facebook with a caption reading 'The beginning of WORLD WAR 3'.
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Fact Check
BOOM did a reverse image search on a keyframe from the video and found the same clip uploaded on an Instagram account on October 19, 2021.
The Arabic caption with the video translates to 'These events, the money of the Easy Brigade, is for those who were separated from the air and went to the Normandy region. The events are in a series called the band of brothers'.
Translation by Google Translate.
This confirms that the video is old and not related to the ongoing airstrikes on Ukraine by Russia.
We narrowed down our keyword search and found another Instagram post shared from a handle named borisao_blois from October 8, 2021 with a caption reading 'POV: You are going to die. What humanity once saw'. The post has used hashtags like #war #ww2 #aesthetic #secondworldwar #he111 #battle #bombing #blitz and #1940s.
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The Instagram handle mentions it to be a 3D animator. We also checked the YouTube channel linked to the handle and found a longer and clearer version of the now viral video with a logo of Borisao_Blois which has been blurred in the viral clip. The video was uploaded on October 30, 2021.
The title with the video, in Spanish, translates to 'Do you want to know how it felt to be in the SECOND WORLD WAR? This is for you...'.
Translated by Google.
The video has a description in Spanish which translates to 'This is a tiny compilation of my animations belonging to the WW2 or Second World War4 section. I will try to bring animations further away from aerial combat because it is quite evident that they have been the protagonists. I want to create the battle of a Tiger 1 against an M4 Sherman. Many hugs! If you liked it, subscribe! Music used: - Biggering (Original Demo) · The 88 · The Lorax Singers'.
The channel has several simulation videos recreating wars and airstrikes. The About section of the YouTube channel describes it as 'Hago ANIMACIONES 3D / 3D ANIMATOR'.
We reached out to the YouTube channel over email to find out more about the video. The channel replied to BOOM saying, "This is just an animation I made. It's not a video about Ukraine."
BOOM has been debunking misinformation regarding the Russia-Ukraine crisis being shared on social media. Click here to read all out reports related to the ongoing crisis.
