A video of jets flying over Paris and bombing the city, including the area near the Eiffel Tower is viral online amid the ongoing unrest in France. BOOM found that the video is old and not real, and has been created using computer graphics by the Ukraine government to link it to the protests in France.
The unrest in France has eased after almost a week following the killing of Nahel M, a 17-year-old teenager, who was shot by a police officer near a traffic stop in Nanterre, west of Paris. The grandmother of the teenager, Nadia, appealed to the protestors to stop the violence in a statement to French news outlet BFM TV. She told the outlet, "Don't break windows, buses ... schools. We want to calm things down." Meanwhile French President Emmanuel Macron was set to meet leaders of both the houses of parliament on Monday as violent protests appeared to have eased after five nights of unrest, reported the Guardian.
The video shows an aerial attack as a woman is posing in front of the Eiffel Tower. Some other clips follow that show Paris being bombed. The video is being shared with the caption, "#Paris has fallen down !!"
Click here to view the tweet.
Click here to view the tweet.
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the video is created by the Ukraine government using CGI and is from March 2022 when the country was trying to demonstrate the need for the closure of Ukraine's air space.
A reverse image search of one of the keyframes from the video led us to a report by Newsweek published on March 12, 2022 with the headline, 'Ukraine Releases Edited Video of Mock Attack on Paris, in Message to NATO'.
The story carried a video from Ukraine's Defence Ministry's Twitter account. Uploaded on March 12, the video was the same as our viral video and was shared with the caption, "#ifwefallyoufall ❗️@NATO close the sky over Ukraine!"
This video was slightly longer than the viral video and carried the text, "Just think if this were to happen in another European capital. We will fight till the end. Giving us a chance to live. Close the sky over Ukraine, or give us air fighters. If we fall, you fall, -President V. Zelenskyy."
A similar tweet by the Kyiv Post can be seen here. Al Jazeera also shared the video on its YouTube channel on the same day calling the video a simulation.
According to Forbes, the origins of the video are unknown, but the video was made as an appeal to NATO to shut down Ukraine's air space to curb any aerial attacks by Russia. However, NATO turned down this appeal in order to prevent initiating a war with Russia.