A video showing India's Ambassador to Romania making an in-flight announcement welcoming Indian students evacuated from Ukraine, is being shared online with a false claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin went on an Air India aircraft to 'convince Indians'.
India is currently operating evacuation flights from countries bordering Ukraine - Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia - after Ukrainian airspace was closed due to the Russian military attack. According to media reports, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reached out to his counterparts in the Slovak Republic and Romania, Ukraine's neighbouring countries from where India is trying to evacuate its citizens, about evacuation strategies from these countries.
The viral video is being shared with captions hailing close diplomatic ties between PM Modi and Vladimir Putin.
One of the captions with the video claims, "Russian President Putin himself directly went on aircraft of (AI) AIR INDIA to convince Indians. What a Respect for India. Be proud of to be an Indian. PMModiji Great Ji".
Click here to view the post.
Click here to view the post.
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Fact Check
BOOM did a reverse image search on one of the key frames from the video and found the same video in an Economic Times article published on February 26, 2022. The caption with the video reads as, "Russia-Ukraine Crisis: Indian Ambassador in Romania interacting with students evacuated from Ukraine, watch!".
Taking a cue from this, we ran a related keyword search on Twitter and found the same video on ET NOW's official twitter handle carrying its logo as seen in the viral video.
ET NOW tweeted the video with a caption saying, "Whenever you face difficulty in life, remember this day & everything will be fine" - Listen in to India's Ambassador to Romania Rahul Shrivastava's special message to Indian nationals on board Air India flight".
Click here to view an archive of the post.
Union Minister Piyush Goyal also tweeted the video on February 26, 2022 mentioning India's ambassador to Romania. The tweet can be seen below.
Click here to view an archive of the post.
DD News also tweeted a video report of Rahul Shrivastava's interaction with evacuated students from Ukraine on February 26, 2022. The video shows Shrivastava has been misidentified as Putin by viral Facebook posts.
Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia on March 2, 2022 tweeted a few photos of himself and Rahul Shrivastava where they can be seen discussing the operational issues for evacuation.
'Indians reached Romania from Ukraine via the Suceava border crossing as part of a coordinated evacuation mission by the Ministry of External Affairs and Indian embassies in Ukraine and Romania,' ET reported.
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