X Users Palm Off 2018 Footage as Recent Russia Bridge Collapse

On April 8, a road bridge collapsed over railway tracks in the town of Vyazma, western Russia, killing one person and injuring five. Local media speculated the bridge collapsed due to old age, although authorities are investigating the cause of the incident.

A number of X users shared what they called footage of the bridge collapse, some with commentary stating or implying that Russia, in using its resources to wage war against Ukraine, is neglecting domestic problems, like its decaying infrastructure.

The Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s oldest English-language newspaper, included a screen capture of that footage in its story on the incident.

Olexander Scherba, a Ukrainian diplomat and the country’s former ambassador to Austria, shared that footage on X, with the following comment:

“In #russia, a bridge near Smolensk falls on a strategically important railway. Sad.

“#StandWithUkraine #RussiaIsCollapsing”

However, the footage accompanying Scherba’s post is misleading.

While a bridge did collapse in Vyazma recently, the footage shared by Scherba and others is actually from the 2018 collapse of a freeway bridge over the Trans-Siberian Railway in the city of Svobodny, near Russia’s border with China — the opposite side of the country from Vyazma.

Footage of the 2018 incident was posted to YouTube at the time.

In that footage, a truck is crossing the bridge as it collapses. According to initial reports, including by The Associated Press, authorities said the truck driver broke his leg and suffered chest wounds, although no deaths were reported.

The Associated Press has published footage showing the aftermath of the Vyazma bridge collapse, but not the moment the bridge collapsed. Footage of the moment the bridge collapsed has been posted on social media.

The hashtag shared by Scherba, “#RussiaIsCollapsing,” and comments by other pro-Ukraine accounts, reflects a narrative being shared on X and other social media platforms.

Supporters of Ukraine have argued that Russia is using up resources to attack Ukraine, and specifically to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure, while neglecting decaying infrastructure at home.

Some media outlets have also expressed that view.

In its report on the Vyazma incident, the Kyiv Post said the cause of the bridge collapse was not immediately clear, but added “there has been a surge of utility infrastructure failures in Russia during the winter due to decades of disrepair, which can be attributed to prolonged government negligence and, in some cases, corruption.”

NBC News reported in February that a raft of accidents and utility network failures in Russia had left people without heat, noting that the country’s Soviet-era infrastructure “has not been uniformly modernized.”

“And with the economy now firmly directed on the war in Ukraine, funding for such repairs is only scheduled to fall over the next couple of years,” NBC said.

The Washington Post made a similar argument in a December 2023 article whose headline read, “As Russia bombs Ukraine’s infrastructure, its own services crumble”:

“While disasters now raise suspicions of sabotage linked to the war in Ukraine, poorly maintained infrastructure is a long-standing and persistent problem in Russia — the result of old Soviet-era systems in need of repair and costly maintenance, decades of endemic corruption, and the government’s prioritization of defense and security budgets, as well as the development of major cities over regional towns.”