Fact Check: Scenes from 2021 protest against Alexei Navalny's arrest shared as ongoing anti-war demonstrations in Moscow
India Today
A video from a huge demonstration has been making the rounds on social media purporting to show an anti-war protest in Moscow. India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be misleading.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has spawned anti-war protests across the world, including in Russia. According to reports, thousands have been detained in Russia so far for protesting against the war.
A video from a huge demonstration has been making the rounds on social media, with claims that it is from an anti-war protest in Moscow.
The archived versions of similar posts can be seen here, here, and here.
The India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found the claim along with the video to be misleading. This video has been on the internet since at least January 2021.
We first noticed that several social media users from Russia pointed out the video was old and not related to the ongoing war. We ran a reverse search of the keyframes of the video on the Russian search engine Yandex and found the same video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=c1Gg3law1fE ) shared as early as January 23, 2021. As per social media posts, the video was from Moscow and captured a protest against the arrest of the Russian leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny.
