Fake video doesn’t show Russian strike on Ukrainian arms depot

A video has been shared on Facebook with captions claiming that it shows “a Russian Kinzhal Missile with a speed of 12,000 km/hr, 10 times faster than the speed of sound” hitting an underground Ukrainian arms depot.

The video has also appeared with this claim on Twitter.

The video doesn’t show this. It was created by a visual effects artist and first appeared on YouTube in February 2022 with the title “What if Russia Started Nuclear War?” 

The video also has 43 million views on TikTok where it was posted by an account with the same username as the YouTube channel that posted it.

The account that uploaded the video to YouTube features other fake videos like “Moon CRASHES AND HITS EARTH CAUGHT ON CAMERA” and “alien mothership in new york”.

The YouTube channel’s description says “VFX… that’s it”. The creator told Reuters that they had created the effect in the video using the VFX and video editing software HitFilm.

For more of our fact checks on this topic, see our Ukraine war page. We’ve also written a blog post about how to spot misleading videos falsely claiming to show events in Ukraine.

What is a Kinzhal missile?

Russia did claim to have destroyed an underground arms depot in western Ukraine using a Kinzhal missile in March 2022, which would have been the first known use of the weapon in this war. The video on YouTube predates this attack.

According to the BBC, Kinzhal missiles can fly five times the speed of sound and could potentially carry a nuclear warhead, though the one used to attack the Ukrainian arms depot did not.

The Russian defence ministry posted a different video it claimed showed the strike.