No, this video doesn’t show Ukrainians faking damage at Odesa’s Transfiguration Cathedral with props

Context

On July 23, 2023, Russian forces hit Odesa’s Transfiguration Cathedral during an airstrike. According to reports, the UNESCO world heritage site was severely damaged. Elsewhere in the city, 22 people, including children, were reportedly injured.

A video has circulated widely on social media after this event. It shows a television displaying Sky News’s coverage of the subsequent cleanup operation in the cathedral. While this footage is of extremely poor quality, social media users have pointed out what they claim shows a woman picking up a pile of rubble with ease, claiming the video has been faked with props. 

One social media user, posting on Twitter, captioned the footage, “JUST IN: Bombshell video played by Sky News LIVE ON THE AIR appears to show fake props being used to show war-torn Ukraine.” This post garnered over 15,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.

Despite many social media users claiming that the objects in this footage are props, Logically Facts has determined this is untrue.

In Fact

The shared video was recorded on a camera, pointing at a television displaying Sky News coverage of this event. The footage from the church is shown on a screen behind the presenters. These factors combine to make the footage extremely poor quality and difficult to analyze. 

Logically Facts found the original footage to determine what objects the woman in the video is holding. This was recorded by the news outlet Rudaw, as made clear by a logo shown in the corner of the screen during the Sky News broadcast. 

The original footage is available on Rudaw’s website. It is of a much higher quality, and because of this, it is easy to tell that the woman in the video is carrying some kind of lightweight building material, likely insulation. This is even more apparent in a later shot showing the same woman, which is not included in the now-viral clip. This shows the woman carrying the same material, which has a polystyrene-like appearance, in a manner completely unlike someone pretending to carry a heavy object. 

The Verdict

Examining the original version of this footage, which is longer and of much higher quality, it is clear that the material being carried is not a prop. This claim has therefore been marked as false.