The video of this paratrooper, which has over 20 million views on the social network “TikTok”, was not recorded this year, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. NBC News reporter Ben Collins, who specializes in exposing disinformation, writes that this video is old. The same thing was posted on Instagram in August 2015, writes Truthmeter.mk.
Under the syndicating agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text below:
Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the media in the country and in the world have been intensively reporting on the situation in both countries, and the reports contain numerous videos and photos.
One such video is the one released on 24 February 2022, which is claimed to be from a parachutist who is filmed flying over Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine.
A video posted on the TikTok social network shows a smiling Russian soldier filming himself parachuting before landing near Kharkiv.
As can be seen in the video, the soldier is visibly smiling and in a good mood and enjoys the flight, filming the other soldiers around him, according to the published information.
This video of the Russian soldier is linked to a previously published news video that shows thousands of Russian paratroopers in the sky over Ukraine, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine this year.
However, our checks led to the conclusion that the video of the “cheerful Russian soldier” is not filmed in 2022, but in 2015.
NBC News reporter Ben Collins, who specializes in exposing disinformation, writes that the video of this paratrooper, which has over 20 million views on the social network TikTok, is actually old. The same video was posted on an Instagram account in August 2015.
For the same video, “USA Today” writes that it does not originate from 2022 and adds that they could not independently confirm the location of the video.
The same conclusions were reached by Reuters fact-checkers.
Misleading. Selfie video of paratroopers was not filmed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022; the same clip was posted on Instagram in 2015, – Reuters claims.
Given all of the above, we assess that it is not true that the viral video of a paratrooper is from 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it is from 2015.
