Video doesn’t show Russian and Ukrainian soldiers dancing together after invasion

A video on Facebook claims to show Russian and Ukrainian soldiers dancing together, with the caption urging people not to “buy into the drama that is being propagated by the media”, falsely indicating that this is a recent video following the invasion of Ukraine. 

However, this video predates the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February by at least six days. As Spanish fact checking site Verificador have reported, the earliest appearance of this video clip appears to be from 18 February, when it was posted to Instagram by what appears to be an account based in Crimea.

The accompanying caption, translated through Google, states: “This is how all peoples in Russia should live together, and the enemy is not terrible.” Crimea was illegally annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014.

Reuters, which also fact checked the clip, found that the video had been featured in at least two local news reports prior to the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. The articles identify the troops as part of Russia’s Southern Military District and do not suggest any Ukrainian troops were present.

Both local news reports, as well as the Instagram caption, claim the video was filmed in a village called Podgornoye, situated in the Bakhchysarai district in central Crimea. While there has been intense fighting in south eastern Ukraine, in an attempt to create a land route between Russia and Crimea, the current conflict has not extended into Crimea itself. 

There is no evidence that any of the soldiers in the video were part of the Ukrainian forces, and given Russia’s annexation of the region it’s extremely unlikely they would have been there on 18 February when the video was posted.