These images do not show NATO military equipment destroyed in Ukraine

Published on: 06/07/2022 – 17:43 Since June 5, pro-Russian accounts have been sharing images on social networks supposed to show the destruction of military equipment belonging to NATO and deployed in Ukraine. According to them, these helicopters, tanks and weapons warehouses were destroyed by the Russian army. In reality, these images have nothing to do with NATO. Verification in brief Several Facebook accounts have shared a video purporting to show NATO helicopters and tanks destroyed by the Russian army in Ukraine. But these images are fake: they are in fact an excerpt from the Arma 3 video game, published on YouTube on April 7, 2022. Other accounts are posting a photo of a burning warehouse on Twitter and Facebook. They say it was a NATO arms depot destroyed in Ukraine by the Russian army. We found the building in question. It has nothing to do with the military and is actually a grain depot in the civilian port of Mykolaiv. NATO on Ukrainian territory. These pro-Russian accounts are also surprised that no “Western media has reported these facts”. And for good reason: these images, which have nearly 90,000 views, are fake and actually come from… a video game. Screenshot of one of the Facebook posts, published on June 5, 2022, and sharing these images from a video game. © Observers Several elements raise doubts about the authenticity of these images. These include, for example, music, sound effects, or even characters who are perfectly still. To verify the origin of this video, we carried out a reverse image search (see here how to proceed). This search returns many videos from the Arma 3 game. And, by searching on YouTube for the words “Arma 3 helicopter missile”, we finally found the original video. Comparison between the video posted on Facebook on June 5, 2022 (left) and that posted on Youtube on April 7, 2022 (right). © Observers The excerpt was published on April 7, 2022 by an account that makes combat simulations from video games, such as Arma 3. The title of the video in question indicates that it is a simulation from Arma 3. These images therefore do not show NATO military equipment destroyed by Russia. This is not the first time that images from the Arma 3 game have been hijacked: this has been the case since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, and they were also used in 2018 to make believe in a Turkish drone attack in Syria. The creators of this very realistic game have also, since February 25, 2022, alerted their community about these misuse. Screenshot of the tweet posted on February 25, 2022 by the official Arma Platform account. © Observers An arms depot or a grain warehouse? On Facebook, other pro-Russian accounts have been sharing the image of a burning warehouse since June 6, 2022. They claim that it is a NATO arms depot, located in the port of Mykolaiv, which was destroyed by a Russian army strike. Screenshot of this false information posted on Facebook on June 6, 2022. © Observers To verify these claims, we performed a reverse image search of this post (see how to do this here). However, this search returns to many tweets sharing the same image but accompanied by a different caption. According to these tweets, this building would rather be a grain warehouse in the port of Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine. Screenshot of one of the tweets posted on June 5, 2022 and featuring the image of this burning warehouse. © Observers Is it a warehouse for storing weapons or grain? To find out, we searched on Google for images of the city of Mykolaiv, and, more specifically, of the Nika-Tera port. However, this research refers to several articles detailing the activity of this port. According to Alim Agakishiev, port manager since 2017, in 2020 cereals represented 76% of the goods transiting there. Above all, some of these articles evoked, in May 2020, the construction of a new warehouse dedicated to the storage of cereals. We find in these articles several photographs of this new warehouse. These images correspond to the photograph of the fire shared on Facebook and Twitter since June 5, 2022. Comparison between the photograph published on Facebook on June 6, 2022 (left), and that of the Mykolaiv port warehouse published on May 28, 2020 (right) by InterAgro. © Observers The building in flames that we see in these images is therefore not a NATO arms depot but this new grain warehouse at the port of Mykolaiv, the construction of which Ukrainian media announced in May 2020 Other images of this burning warehouse, taken from other angles, were also published on June 5, 2022 on Twitter. Screenshot of one of the tweets posted on June 5, 2022 and sharing other images of the fire in this warehouse. © Observers