A clip circulating online purporting to show Ukrainian military striking Russian Army tanks is not legitimate footage from the war but a part of a video game Arma 3.
The clip shared by users online appears to show footage filmed at dusk, with a line of military tanks driving along a road. A missile subsequently strikes one of the tanks. Further missiles can be seen striking other military vehicles.
Users shared the clip with captions claiming that the footage was authentic.
“Ukraine is playing havoc with the Russian armour with state of the art [sic] anti armour missiles,” one user who shared the clip via Twitter said (here).
Other examples of the footage shared online can be found (here), (here).
The footage is inauthentic, however. A spokesperson for Bohemia Interactive, the developer of the game in question, told Reuters the video was created via modified gameplays from Arma 3.
A search through Arma 3 gameplays uploaded to YouTube reveals a clip uploaded in July 2022 by the account MILMAN (bit.ly/3eG8MU8). The clip circulating online matches a scene viewable in the YouTube footage (timestamp: 2:36s).
Meanwhile, the YouTube account that uploaded the footage clearly described it as showing videogame clips, not authentic footage from the war.
A section of the description reads: “This video was created with ARMA, it is not completely representative of reality, it is just a simulation of real news.” An archived version of the YouTube clip can be viewed (archive.ph/wip/D2SEg).
A side-by-side comparison of a screengrab taken from the clip currently circulating online (left) to a screenshot of the YouTube Arma 3 footage at the aforementioned timestamp (right) can be viewed (ibb.co/GCV1nXQ).
Reuters has previously addressed video game footage shared erroneously by users online as showing authentic footage from the war in Ukraine (here), (here).
VERDICT
False. The clip shows footage taken from the videogame Arma 3, not authentic footage from the war in Ukraine.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.