Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
As the war between Russia and Ukraine enters day 24 on Saturday (March 19), both the warring countries claim to have called for foreign volunteers to join their respective armed forces in the ongoing conflict. In the wake of these claims, a video claiming to show that armed soldiers from the US and Europe have arrived in Ukraine—much to the chagrin of Russia, is going viral on TikTok. Newschecker found the claim to be false and unrelated.
Diplomats and peace negotiators are meeting for another round of cease-fire talks as Russian forces continue to attack Ukraine’s capital. According to foreign media reports, representatives of the two countries are due to hold another round of direct talks to resolve the crisis.
Against this backdrop, TikTok user @susmi5011 posted a video, which shows visuals of a military parade of army personnel in front of a dome structure. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Soldiers from the US and Europe have just arrived in Ukraine, this has become a matter of headache for Russia. Pray for Ukraine.”
The video posted on March 8 has been spreading fast garnering 30.6k likes and 99 shares until the time of publishing this article.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim, Newschecker conducted a google reverse image search by taking several key-frames. But none of the results shown for different frames matched the viral video.
On closer inspection of the frames, we noticed the badges worn by the soldiers on the scene and flags hoisted on the military vehicles. The badges pointed us towards the flags of Russia and Chechnya. Further, we searched YouTube for videos for keywords such as ‘Chechanya’, ‘Russia’ and ‘military parade’ and found a video whose surroundings somewhat matched the viral video. The video posted on a YouTube channel called FM Images Albania on February 25 reportedly showed Chechen military personnel joining Russian forces to go to Ukraine.
Taking it as a clue, we scoured YouTube for other videos of the mass gathering of Chechen soldiers before joining the Russian forces to invade Ukraine and found a video posted by Spanish TV LibertadDigital on 28 February. The YouTube video contained visuals similar to the viral video.
We found another video from the same event posted on March 1 on YouTube named ‘TigerTanks237’, which shows Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, addressing service members before invading Russia. Analysing the visuals from the YouTube channel, we can conclude that the amateurish viral video was captured from a different angel of the even addressed by the Chechn leader.
According to a February 26 Reuters article, Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that Chechen fighters had been deployed to Ukraine and urged Ukrainians to overthrow their government.
Further, we checked for the latest positions of the US government and the European Union regarding the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. Though both the US and EU have announced fresh military aids in support of Ukraine and sanctions against Russia after the latter
launched its attack on Ukraine on February 24, neither the US nor any of the EU member countries have sent their troops to Ukraine.
Delivering his fresh remarks on new actions against Russia on March 12, US President Joe Biden said that the U.S. will not send troops or equipment into Ukraine because of the potential to draw the country into World War III.
Conclusion
The video purporting to show the US and European soldiers arriving in Ukraine for the country’s support in its ongoing war with Russia show the Chechen-Russian soldiers before heading to Ukraine, and falsely shared as US and European soldiers.
Result: False Context/ False
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
