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| - Fact Check: No, this video DOES NOT show protests in Moscow against ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine
A video from a huge demonstration has been making the rounds on social media purporting to show an anti-war protest in Moscow. India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be misleading.
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India Today Fact Check
This video from Tverskaya Street in Moscow is more than a year old. In January 2021, it was shared on social media with claims that it showed protest against the arrest of Alexei Navalny.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has spawned anti-war protests across the world, including in Russia. According to reports, thousands have been detained in Russia so far for protesting against the war.
A video from a huge demonstration has been making the rounds on social media, with claims that it is from an anti-war protest in Moscow.
The archived versions of similar posts can be seen here, here, and here.
The India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found the claim along with the video to be misleading. This video has been on the internet since at least January 2021.
AFWA probe
We first noticed that several social media users from Russia pointed out the video was old and not related to the ongoing war. We ran a reverse search of the keyframes of the video on the Russian search engine Yandex and found the same video ( https://www.youtube.com/
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Verified Twitter users also shared the video around the same week in January 2021 with the same claim.
A view of Navalny’s protest crowd in Moscow, via @bazabazon pic.twitter.com/wopFSWiRFr — Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) January 23, 2021
We then searched for media reports from Russia published in January 2021 surrounding the arrest and subsequent protests. According to a BBC report published on January 23, 2021, thousands of people were detained across Russia after they protested against the arrest of Navalny.
On January 17, 2021, Navalny was arrested by the police at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, soon after he landed in the country following medical treatment in Berlin, Germany. According to a report in The Guardian, Navalny’s investigations into corruption in Putin’s inner circle provoked the ire of Russia’s powerbrokers. Following Navalny's arrest, weeks-long protests took place in Russia.
We also found several other videos of people protesting the arrest of Navalny in January 2021.
Responding to the viral video, BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh also tweeted, saying the video was from the January 2021 protest against Navalny’s arrest.
Geolocating the video
At the beginning of the viral video, we noticed a blue bus similar to the ones found on the roads of Moscow. We cropped the screenshots of a few buildings seen in the video and ran reverse-image searches on Yandex.
This led us to photos of Tverskaya Street in Moscow. We then searched for the street view of Tverskaya Street on Google and found the same buildings and streets seen in the viral video.
The Google Maps location of the street can be seen here. A comparison between screenshots from the viral video and Google Street View of Tverskaya Street can be seen below.
We cannot say with absolute certainty that the video in question was from one of the January 2021 protests. However, with the available details, we can conclude that the video, while from Moscow, does not capture anti-war protests against Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
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