FACT CHECK: Video Shows Russian-Ukrainian War, Not Iranian Missile Launch

Elias Atienza | Senior Reporter

A video shared on X claims to show a failed Iranian missile launch.


Verdict: False

The video is from the Russian-Ukrainian war. It is not from the Oct. 1 Iranian attack.

Fact Check:

The Israeli military is planning on hitting Iran in retaliation for the Iranian Oct. 1 ballistic missile attack that struck several military installations in Israel and killed a Palestinian and wounded two Israelis, according to the Times of Israel.

Social media users are sharing a video of a missile being fired and turning back towards its original point, claiming it shows an Iranian missile launch. One user wrote, “Say if this is not the hand of God, A missile from the Iranian attack makes a U-turn and destroys the launcher, wow.”

This claim is false. Through a reverse image search, Check Your Fact found that the video shows a failed Russian surface-to-air (SAM) missile launch. It was taken in June 2022, per posts sharing the video.

“Alchevs’k, Luhansk Oblast, a Russian SAM fails during launch,” OSINTtechnical, an account that uses open-source intelligence to track conflicts, wrote at the time.

It also shared a different angle of the failed launch. (RELATED: No, Pakistan Did Not Threaten Nuclear Retaliation Against Israel)

The video is from the Russian-Ukrainian war and was taken two years before the Iranian attack. We rate this claim as false.

Elias Atienza

Senior Reporter
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