FACT CHECK: No, This Military Footage Is Not From The War In Ukraine

A video shared on Facebook purportedly shows combat footage from the war in Ukraine.

Verdict: False

The video first appeared in 2016 and compiles clips from as far back as 2012. The footage has nothing to do with the current conflict in Ukraine.

Fact Check:

Despite limited gains in Ukraine, Russian airstrikes and ground assaults in the country are intensifying as peace talks are yielding no results, according to The New York Times. On Wednesday, an airstrike hit a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol killing three, the Associated Press reported.

An 18-minute-long video shared on Facebook claims to show footage from the war. It includes numerous short clips, including some that show military helicopters firing weapons and artillery rounds hitting a hillside. At several points in the video large white numbers are visible on the ground. “Ukraine war Live,” reads part of the video’s caption. (RELATED: Did The Russian Ambassador To The UN Say That Donald Trump Was Overthrown?)

The video predates the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The verified YouTube channel ArmedForcesUpdate, whose name appears at the bottom of the video, first posted the footage to YouTube in April 2016. “A great video of the US Military putting on a show of force in military exercise,” the video description reads in part, crediting the footage to “Staff Sgt. Brandon Owen, Sgt. 1st Class Lawree Washingtonn, Pfc. Jun Sung Lee and Sgt. Elliot Valdez.”

Some of the footage could be found on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) website, where it is identified as showing a live-fire training being conducted in Afghanistan in March 2012 by the American and South Korean militaries. Other clips featured in the Facebook video were filmed in South Korea in August 2015 and March 2016, according to DVIDS.

This is not the first time old military footage has been falsely identified as combat footage from Ukraine. Check Your Fact recently debunked a video that claimed to show Ukrainian and Russian forces engaged in a battle but actually showed U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

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