Pro-Russian social media accounts have been widely sharing a video that they claim shows Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to the Russian army en masse. The video, however, actually shows a prisoner swap between the Russian state-funded paramilitary group, the Wagner Group, and the Ukrainian army in May 2023.
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- Pro-Russian accounts have falsely claimed that a viral video shows Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to Russia en masse.
- The video actually shows Ukraine exchanging prisoners of war with the Wagner Group, a Russian-state-funded paramilitary organisation, in May 2023.
The fact-check, in detail
“Ukrainian soldiers don’t want to die for Zelensky. They surrender without a fight!” reads a tweet published on July 24, featuring a video. A number of accounts have made similar claims that the drone footage shows Ukrainian forces surrendering to the Russian army.
The video shows at least eleven tanks draped with white flags halted on a road. There are also two groups of people on the road, each made up of dozens of men in uniform. One group heads to one set of vehicles, the other towards another. The video has garnered more than 135,000 views.
A tweet featuring the footage along with a caption in English garnered more than 798,000 views. The video has also been circulating on Facebook with captions in French and in English.
Footage showing a prisoner exchange that took place last May
The video shows two different groups of men, walking in opposite directions. The tanks carry white flags, which usually represent a neutral zone. These provide context clues that the video might actually show a prisoner exchange.
Indeed, when we searched using the keywords “Ukraine”, “prisoner exchange” and “drone” on YouTube, we pulled up a report from the British media outlet The Telegraph, called “Wagner exchange prisoners of war with Ukraine”.
The scene featured in the viral video appears at 0’34 in the Telegraph video, albeit filmed at another angle by another drone. However, you can see the white-flagged tanks in the same positions as well as the same two groups of men making their trek to opposite sets of vehicles.
The same video was shared on May 25 on a Telegram claiming to be the official channel of the recruitment branch of Wagner. The video also features additional images of the prisoner swap. The exact location where the swap took place is unknown.
In summary, the video shows a prisoner exchange between the Wagner Group and the Ukrainian Armed Forces that took place on May 25, 2023 in Ukraine and not the “surrender” of Ukrainian soldiers to the Russian forces.
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