A video of a protest demonstration in Vienna, Austria where protesters covered themselves with body bags to show lives that could be lost by climate change, is going viral with false claims that it shows Ukrainian TV faking deaths amidst Russia's invasion.
The video is viral amid the ongoing war in Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operations on the country. Recently, Meta (Facebook) took down several Russian accounts and pages for spreading disinfomation in Ukraine about the current situation in the country.
The clip is being shared on social media and WhatsApp with a caption that aims to show that Ukrainians are faking deaths to show the casualties of the Russian attack.
The video is being shared with text which claims, "Ukraine live TV supposedly filming dead persons in TV killed during the invasion. But during filming one of dead woke up adjusting his /her for conformable posture" and is viral on Facebook and Twitter.
The video shows a reporter speaking to the camera in German about the protests, with the background showing a rows of people in body bags when one of the people suddenly moves and removes the body bag and then is helped by a third person to put back the black body bag on himself.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the video is from Vienna, Austria and show climate change protesters holding a demonstration and is not related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
We noticed the text 'Wien: Demo Gegen Klimapolitik' and the reporter speaking to the camera identified as Marvin Bergauer - reporter OE24.TV and using the same keywords we ran a search and found the original on YouTube. The video was uploaded by the verified handle of OE24.TV on February 4, 2022 with the same text seen on the screen which translates to - Vienna: Demo against climate policy.
We heard the video using translated subtitles and found that the reporter is saying that 49 protesters are laying on the ground in body bags to show the number of people who could die everyday in Austria because of climate changes.
You can see a screenshot of the video with the English translated captions below -
View the video below -
Additionally we found a news story in NÖN, Austria based media house which carried a story about the same protest with photos from the same event showing people laying on the ground in body bags.
According to the photo caption in the story, in a protest organised by Fridays for Future - Austria wing, 49 people laid down outside the Austrian Federal Chancellery building.
We also found posts put out by Fridays For Future - Austria on February 3 on their verified Facebook page, asking people to participate in the event to be held on February 4.