Blog

Mar 28, 2024

FALSE: This isn’t a video of a Russian missile strike on British ships delivering​ weapons to Ukraine

PesaCheck Follow PesaCheck -- Listen Share This Facebook post with a video, purportedly of a Russian missile strike on two British cargo ships delivering​ weapons to the Ukrainian army, is FALSE. The

PesaCheck

Follow

PesaCheck

--

Listen

Share

This Facebook post with a video, purportedly of a Russian missile strike on two British cargo ships delivering​ weapons to the Ukrainian army, is FALSE.

The post reads: “It has just started Russia and Ukraine war, I see world war 3 coming, just watch the recent video here. The port has it that Russian missiles hit two British cargo ships delivering​ weapons to the Ukrainian army, triggering a massive explosion. The UK & US Government must stop using Ukraine as proxy to fight Russia. This is just the beginning.”

The United Kingdom has offered Ukraine military assistance since the February 2022 Russian invasion. However, the video in question is from a different incident in 2020 in Lebanon.

A separation of the keyframes on video verification tool InVid WeVerify, followed by a reverse image search on Microsoft Bing, established that the footage in the claim is from an explosion in Beirut.

The footage was uploaded on YouTube on 4 August 2020 with the title, “Beirut Explosion Video Footage | Beirut Port Blast Video Compilation #1 | Lebanon Blast.”

The name ‘Maverick’s Cafe Bar’, a pub located in Beirut, is seen in the claim video.

According to a report by BBC News featuring the video, the explosion, which was caused by a massive fire at the Port of Beirut, “killed at least 200 people and injured around 5,000 others”. The cause of the explosion was “the detonation of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate” that had been stored “unsafely at a warehouse in the port”.

PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post with a video, purportedly of a Russian missile strike on two British cargo ships delivering​ weapons to the Ukrainian army, and finds it to be FALSE.

This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.

By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.

Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.

This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Peris Gachahi and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.

The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.

PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.

PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.