| schema:text
| - Fact Check: Italy's Republic Day ceremony passed off as France's farewell to Rafale
A video claiming to show France bidding farewell to Rafales destined for India with its jets forming the Tricolour in the skies has gone viral on social media.
Listen to Story
India Today Fact Check
The video is of Italy’s Republic Day celebrations, and at least a year old.
The first batch of Rafale fighter jets touched down on Indian soil on July 29. Now, a video of jets forming a tricolour in the skies is going viral with the claim that this was how France bid farewell to the Rafales destined for India. The video shows jets emerging from behind a magnificent structure and forming synchronised smoke trails of green, white and red colours.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim along with the video to be false. The video has nothing to do with Rafales and is an old clip of Italy’s Republic Day celebrations in Rome.
The video with the false claim is being widely circulated on social media. The caption reads, “Everyone talked about Rafael landing in India but see the farewell from France with Indian Tricolors.” The archived version of the post can be seen here.
AFWA investigation
Using InVID tool, we found an article on a Chinese news website “Xinhua Net” which says the visuals are from Italy’s Republic Day celebrations in its capital Rome. Several videos of Italy’s R-Day celebrations are available on the Internet, which shows visuals similar to the viral video.
Republic Day in Italy
Italy celebrates its Republic Day on June 2 in which its Air Force performs synchronised stunts, forming the Italian tricolour in the skies. The grand building seen in the viral video is Victor Emmanuel II National Monument from where the R-Day parade starts. The Italian national flag can also be seen in the viral video.
Indian and Italian national flags have near-similar colours, due to which social media users often get misled. The Italian flag has vertical pales of green, white and red, and the Indian flag has horizontal pales of saffron, white and green. So when such air shows are performed in the sky, viewers are prone to be misled.
On July 27, the day the Rafales took off from France, the Indian embassy there tweeted a video of the jets taking off from Merignac airbase in Bordeaux.
Rafale aircrafts maneuvered by the world’s best pilots, soar into the sky. Emblematic of new heights in India-France defence collaboration #ResurgentIndia #NewIndia@IAF_MCC @MeaIndia @rajnathsingh @Dassault_OnAir @DefenceMinIndia @PMOIndia@JawedAshraf5 @DDNewslive @ANI pic.twitter.com/FrEQYROWSv— India in France (@Indian_Embassy) July 27, 2020
The same video went viral last year as well with the claim that this was how India’s Independence Day was marked in London’s Trafalgar Square. At that time too, AFWA had debunked the claim.
Therefore, it can be said that the video of jets forming a tricolour in the skies has nothing to do with Rafales. This was not how France bid farewell to the jets destined for India as claimed in the viral post. It is an old clipping of Italy’s Republic Day celebrations.
Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000
You can also send us an email at factcheck@intoday.com
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)