A video of a man driving around an area showing dug-up land and graves with cross-shaped tombstones is being shared across social media platforms.
The video, which appears to have been filmed from a moving vehicle, is being shared to claim that the Russian government has dug mass graves for its soldiers killed in the war against Ukraine.
However, we found that the video dates back to 2021 and shows graves dug up in Surgut, Russia in preparation for the winters, when digging up frozen ground becomes extremely difficult, and it predates the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
CLAIM
The video is being shared with the caption, “Hundreds of graves have been dug in the cemeteries of Russia - they are waiting for the burial of Russian cargo 200, which is starting to come from Ukraine (sic).”
It was posted on 5 March and had received closed to three lakh views at the time of writing this article.
An archived version of the post can be seen here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND
With the help of InVid, a video verification tool, we extracted several keyframes from the video and conducted a reverse image search on them.
This led us to the same video posted on YouTube and Instagram in the year 2021.
The caption, which was in Russian, when translated using Google mentioned that this is a 'common practice carried out in summers as the ground freezes in winters'.
We also came across reports on Russian websites, SiTV.RU and Muksun.fm from 2021 which, too, stated that graves were dug in order to avoid the laborious task of digging the frozen ground in winters.
Report published in October 2021
(Source: SiTV Russia)
Moreover, the Mayor of Surgut, Andrey Filatov, called out the misinformation and clarified that the graves were being prepared for winter, adding that the practice has been going on for the last 15 years.
The Mayor has also posted his statement along with a video on Instagram.
Clearly, the fact that the video predates the war makes it clear that it can't be linked to the ongoing war with Ukraine.
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