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| - Fact Check: Old video of French troops in Afghanistan shared as footage of Russia-Ukraine war
We found that an old video of French troops was shared in connection with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, The video has no connection with the current crisis in Ukraine.
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India Today Fact Check
This video has no connection with Ukraine or Russia. This is an old video of French troops fighting in Afghanistan.
Amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, a video has been making the rounds of social media with some dubious claims. Several people on Facebook shared said video with captions like, “Ukraine vs Russia army fight live war updated.”
The India Today Anti-Fake News War Room (AFWA) found this video has no connection with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. It is an old video of French troops fighting in Afghanistan.
The viral posts are archived here and here.
AFWA PROBE
While investigating the claim, two things caught our notice. One, the terrain in the background of the video looks more like a desert. Two, the language the army personnel were speaking in sounded like French.
With the help of InVID and reverse image searches, we found the same video on YouTube, uploaded on August 5, 2021. The caption with this video read: “French foreign legion in heavy combat with Taliban in Afghanistan.”
While the viral video appears laterally inverted, compared to the one we found on YouTube, the contents of the two are exactly the same in every other respect.
While we were unable to find more information on the video — the date and the exact location — France withdrew its combat troops from Afghanistan in November 2012, marking an end of its battlefield role in the NATO-led war there. Despite that, however, it is clear that the video in question has nothing to do with Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
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