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A German soldier demonstrates an anti-tank missile
Photo: Philipp Schulze / dpa
Over the weekend, pro-Kremlin channels circulated a video on social media purporting to show an anti-aircraft missile seized by German police.
They also claimed that the Bremen police had arrested Ukrainians who wanted to sell such weapons on the black market.
The weapons were actually delivered to Ukraine from the West as military aid.
But the message is wrong.
Nevertheless, it reached well over a hundred thousand views on Messenger Telegram alone and also spread to other platforms.
The Bremen police responded early on on Twitter: “This is a false report.
The Bremen police have nothing to do with this video and have not arrested any Ukrainians who dealt in weapons," the police said on their Twitter account on Sunday.
Presumably because the supposed message is also circulating in English and in channels belonging to Russian Putin supporters, the officials had already described it as "fake" in English on Saturday.
However, they were unable to stem the spread.
The video could be exposed as a fake with simple means.
Because under the clip is a soundtrack that comes from a video recording from January 2022.
"Put down your cell phone, you don't have to film something like that," says a voice in the video.
In fact, it is a statement by police officers who want to stop the filming of an arrest on the sidelines of a demonstration against the Corona measures in Greiz, Thuringia.
Russian officials also spread the hoax.
Russia's deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, commented on the circulating video on Twitter, saying that the "Western ex-partners had been warned of such a threat to their own people".
The deputy ambassador did not respond to comments that the alleged report had been denied by official bodies.
The fake news seems to fit too well with the Kremlin's narrative of supposedly dangerous Western arms shipments.
hpp/dpa
