Videos of what appeared to be planes in the air, confronted by air defenses, spread, and the accompanying comments read, “The moment a Russian military plane was shot down.”
The emergence of the videos in this context comes in light of the Russian attack that began at dawn on Thursday on Ukraine by land and air.
Russian fighter crash
The appearance of these videos coincides with the announcement on Thursday by the Ukrainian Army Staff that five Russian planes and helicopters have been shot down.
On the other hand, the Russian Defense Ministry announced Thursday the crash of one of its Su-25 fighters, saying that it was caused by a “pilot’s error”, and that he ejected from the plane while he was “safe and in his military unit.”
Scenes from a video game
However, the circulating videos have nothing to do with the Russian planes, according to the AFP news investigation service.
The search for this video indicated that it was an excerpt from a longer video posted by a YouTube channel that primarily publishes video game clips.
At minute 2:19 of this longer video, a match can be seen with the circulating video.
The longer video was attached to a comment explaining that it was cut from the ARMA 3 game, which was published on the channel on January 29, 2022, about a month before the start of the Russian attack.
In a second circulating video, which depicts a tank firing a hail of bullets at what appears to be a plane, it is in fact an excerpt from a video also published by a YouTube channel that publishes clips from video games.
At 1:16 of the video, a military tank can be seen firing at a flying plane. The accompanying comment stated that the video clips published on November 6, 2021 are from the ARMA 3 game.
And in a third video, it was said that it was the first Russian plane to be shot down in Ukraine, it was in fact excerpted from a video of the same game, published on the sixth of last January.