[FALSE] Does this video show a cohort of Ukrainian refugees who arrived in Munich?

 

Screenshot of the video circulating online.

 

The Claim and Our Verdict

• The claim: A video, widely shared on social media, claims to show a cohort of Ukrainian refugees arriving in Munich.
• Fact-checking:
  • The video has been circulating online since at least December 2018, prior to the Russia-Ukraine war starting from Feb. 24, 2022.
  • People in the video communicated in Brazilian Portuguese, while Ukrainian and Russian are the most widely used languages among Ukrainians.
• Our ruling: We rate the claim as FALSE.

News Brief

The Russia–Ukraine war broke out Feb. 24, 2022. HKBU Fact Check received a fact check request to verify a widely circulating video. The video shows a cohort of women stepping out of a car. The Chinese subtitle superimposed over the footage translates as, “The first batch of Ukrainian refugees arrived in Munich.”

A same video was published Feb. 24, 2022, on YouTube. As of the publication of this report, the video had been viewed 317 times, and it had received two reactions and two likes.

Fact-checking

A reverse image search found that the video has been circulating online since at least December 2018. According to the search results, the video was shared Dec. 4, 2018, on the American online image sharing website Imgur. Therefore, the video had been circulating online since at least December 2018, prior to the Russia–Ukraine war that started Feb. 24, 2022.
 

Screenshot comparison of the YouTube video (left) and the search results on Yandex (right).

 

Screenshot comparison of the YouTube video (left) and the Imgur video (right).

 
A comment on the Imgur post pointed out that people in the video communicated in Brazilian Portuguese. Native speakers confirmed to us that the dialogue in the video was in Brazilian Portuguese, while Ukrainian or Russian are the most widely used languages in Ukraine.