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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

War & conflict fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about war & conflict. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

5,840 published reviews in this topic

dpa-factcheckingWar & conflict

Die Russin im Video weint, weil sie ihren Urlaub wegen der Explosionen auf der Krim abbrechen muss.

Publisher’s rating: Die Szene mit der weinenden Touristin entstand vor den Explosionen auf der Krim am 9. August. Der Schluss, sie habe ihren Urlaub deswegen abgebrochen, ist also falsch. Das ergab eine Analyse des Faktencheck-Teams der Deutschen Presse-Agentur (dpa) von Orten und Uhrzeiten im Video.

The video shows a woman crying in a car and saying she does not want to go home from Crimea. It circulated with the claim that she was leaving because of the explosions at a Russian airbase on 9 August 2022. The investigation compared the video’s chronology and setting with the timing of the explosions, rather than relying on the social-media caption. The original, slightly over ten-minute family video was uploaded to YouTube and Yandex Zen on 9 August; the YouTube upload time given by the review is 19:21 local time on Crimea. The explosions were reported between 15:20 and 16:11 that day. That left only a few hours for the family to have fled, edited the longer video and uploaded it.

FACTLYWar & conflict

Video showing the training of an Indian Armed personnel

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a video of a woman training that was being presented on social media as showing Indian Army personnel. FACTLY’s investigation found that the person in the clip was Brazilian athlete Savina Gabriella, not an Indian Army member. The review says Gabriella had posted the same training video on Instagram, and concludes the attribution to the Indian Army was false. To trace the clip, the investigators used screenshots in a reverse image search on Yandex and found an Instagram post containing the same video. That post was made by Kiran Dembla and tagged “@savinagabriella”; the review then says it checked the tagged account and found Gabriella’s own post of the training video. Its caption, translated in the review, described her feeling at home in the location. This matching video and the account attribution connect the social-media clip to Gabriella rather than merely to a similar training scene. The review also reports checking Gabriella’s identity through a video on the verified YouTube channel Amazing Talents – We Love Sports. The video description identifies her as a rhythmic and artistic gymnast. Taken together, the matching Instagram footage and the described corroboration of her athletic identity support the review’s conclusion that a Brazilian athlete’s training clip was falsely presented as an Indian Army training video.

FACTLYWar & conflict

Video of a BSF jawan with a big moustache who was martyred recently at the India border

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post paired a photograph of a body in a coffin with a video of a moustached BSF jawan saying ‘jiyo aur jeene do’, and claimed the man in the video had recently been martyred at the India border. The investigation found the photo and video showed different people: the photograph was of Indian Army soldier Rajender Singh, while the jawan in the video was BSF constable Virendra Singh. It reports that Virendra Singh was alive and working at the Gede Border between West Bengal and Bangladesh. To check the photograph, the investigators used reverse image search and found it in social media posts from September 2019, describing the deceased as Rajendra Singh Bhati. They also found a video published on YouTube on 30 September 2019 that was described as his funeral procession. The review reports that Bhati, of Mohangarh village in Jaisalmer district, served with the 15 Rajput Regiment and was killed fighting terrorists at Ramban in Jammu and Kashmir on 28 September 2019. For the video, the review says reverse image searches of screenshots led to similar footage identified by users as showing a BSF jawan at the Gede border. It also located a YouTube video in which the jawan says ‘Jiyo aur Jeene Do’, and reports that the footage was shot during a visit to the border on Independence Day. Finally, the review cites an India Today contact with a BSF spokesperson, who identified the jawan as constable Virender Singh and said he was alive and posted in Malda district, West Bengal. Together, these findings show that the death-related photograph concerned a different soldier, not the man in the video.

FACTLYWar & conflict

Visuals of Indian Army’s demonstration combat skills

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim attributes the circulating combat-demonstration footage to the Indian Army. FACTLY reports that the footage instead comes from a South Korean military demonstration at the 69th Korean Armed Forces Day celebration on 28 September 2017. Its account therefore identifies the video’s country and event differently from the claim. FACTLY says it used reverse-image searches on keyframes from the viral clip and found a similar video on the Arirang News YouTube channel, titled “Korea’s 69th Armed Forces Day ceremony.” It then compared the two videos: the viral version was an accelerated, zoomed-in edit combining multiple segments from the longer video, specifically the section from 1:38:24 to 1:39:06. FACTLY also notes a Korean flag on a demonstrator’s arm in both versions. These reported matches support its identification of the viral footage as South Korean, not Indian Army footage.

FACTLYWar & conflict

Visuals of a Kashmiri stone pelter being shot down by Indian army

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video said to show an Indian army convoy and a Kashmiri stone pelter being shot after throwing stones. The review describes the footage as showing people in a street and a man throwing something before being injured in an explosion. It identifies the incident as occurring in La Paz, Bolivia, rather than Kashmir: the event took place in the first week of August 2022 during protests by coca farmers over a parallel coca market. [S1]

dpa FaktencheckWar & conflict

Hier werden russische Gräueltaten inszeniert.

Publisher’s rating: Diese Bilder zeigten oder beweisen nicht, dass ein russischer Angriff von einem ukrainischen Filmteam gefälscht oder erfunden wird, um ihn als Live-Aufnahme einer wahren Begebenheit darzustellen - oder dass die ukrainische Seite generell so handelt. Die Bilder zeigen die Dreharbeiten zum Film «Region of Heroes». Für diesen werden allerdings in der Tat Szenen aus dem russischen Angriffskrieg in der Ukraine inszeniert.