FIFA World Cup 2018 footage misattributed as Swedish pro-Russian protest

What's being claimed?

A viral TikTok video (archived here) with over 1 million views claims to show a large pro-Russian protest happening in Sweden.

In the video, a large group walks down the street with Swedish flags yelling "Spasiba, Ros-si-ya" – "Thank you, Russia."

The video has the hashtag #warzone, implying that it is related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and this appears to be how a majority of the over 5,000 comments have interpreted it. 

"This shows there is a difference between the Swedish people and the criminal politicians," one TikTok user commented in Swedish. "Why isn't this on the news," another Swedish comment asks.

Several of the comments are in Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, and English, which suggests that the video is circulating internationally.

Excerpts from the comment section. Source: TikTok/Screenshots modified by Logically Facts.

However, the footage wasn't filmed in Sweden, and it has nothing to do with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

What we found

A reverse image search using the Russian search engine Yandex reveals a Russian YouTube video from July 7, 2018, with the caption "Hundreds of Swedish fans in Samara chant 'Thank you, Russia!'"

By comparing keyframes from both videos, it is clear that this is the same footage.

The FIFA World Cup 2018 was held in Russia, and the quarter-final between Sweden and England was held in Samara on July 7. The Swedish newspaper Expressen reported that between 800 and 1,000 Sweden supporters were expected to attend the game, and the British newspaper The Independent noted that "Ros-si-ya" was a common chant by locals during the event.

Henrik Sköld, a social media and disinformation reporter at SVT Verify, said the video is an example of old footage taken out of context and misattributed to another.

"The purpose is to show that Russia is indeed liked by the West, contrary to what our politicians claim," he told Logically Facts.

Source: TikTok/YouTube/Screenshots modified by Logically Facts.

Why football?

The TikTok video has surged amid the ongoing UEFA Euro 2024, and according to Jeanette Serritzlev, a military analyst at the Royal Danish Defence College who focuses on information warfare, the user behind it is most likely a pro-Russian disinformation account.

The account, which describes itself as a European and Russian news site for stories that "will not be shown on propaganda TV," has posted eight other videos showing Germany, Poland, Brazilian, French, and Serbian football fans allegedly shouting pro-Putin or pro-Russian chants such as "Putin, Putin!" DW has fact-checked some of these videos and found the audio to be fake.

Serritzlev also noted that the user's content prior to the UEFA Euro 2024 has a pro-Kremlin narrative concerning the West and Ukraine. 

"Furthermore, it is telling that the comments below the video all are tipping into the same narrative. I cannot say definitively if it is all bots or not, but the comment section looks suspicious," Serritzlev told Logically Facts. 

Flemming Splidsboel Hansen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies who focuses on disinformation, agreed.

"Just a quick glance alerts me to the simple and uniform messaging across the videos," he told Logically Facts. "It is all pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian. A great deal of the user interaction also seems suspicious and bot-driven."

The Euro Cup may seem like an unlikely target for disinformation, but according to Serritzlev, it's viewed as an easy way to capitalize on an existing social media trend to achieve greater outreach. 

Evidently, the football videos have become significantly more viral than previous pro-Russian clips by the same TikTok user.

Source: TikTok/Screenshots modified by Logically Facts.

Splidsboel Hansen added that Russia's football community, especially its far-right segment, could be a particularly interesting demographic for Russian authorities.

"The Russian authorities may expect to find some resonance for their ideas and messages there, and we see that Russia is recruiting among far-right activists," he explained.

This was also noted by Andreas Önnerfors, project manager of the Swedish Fojo Media Institute's fact-checking and disinformation program. He said there has been a significant politicization of supporter culture dating back at least a decade, and pointed to the anti-Islam Hooligans gegen Salafisten and the pro-Russian PEGIDA movement as two examples where hooliganism and far-right extremism have intersected.

“[Pro-Russian disinformation spreaders] are trying to "tap into" the radicalization of the hooligan culture by hoping that some hooligans pick up on this and maybe start acting as megaphones for the messages – at least share them,” Önnerfors told Logically Facts.

SVT Verify's Sköld said that Russian disinformation has long been good at adapting to ongoing events and noted that one explanation for the timing is that Ukraine is playing in the Euro Cup: "There have been a lot of claims about Ukrainian players and fans in Germany before the games, that they are deserters, that they are taking the opportunity to protest against Zelenskyj, etc," he added.

The verdict

The footage is from 2018 and shows Swedish football supporters in Russia, not a pro-Russian protest in Sweden. This is part of a larger pro-Russian disinformation campaign using football footage from the FIFA World Cup 2016 and the current Euro Cup. Therefore, we have rated the claim as false.