Video of 2013 church fire in Russia misrepresented as Ukraine in 2023

CLAIM: Video shows Ukrainians burning down an Orthodox church in
the village of Novopoltavka in Ukraine.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The video is from 2013 and shows a Russian Orthodox church on fire in
Ilyinka village in southern Russia.

THE FACTS: The video circulated widely on social media in recent
days, with false claims that it shows Ukrainians setting fire to an Orthodox
church in Novopoltavka, part of the country’s Mykolaiv
region.

Social media accounts affiliated with the Russian government also
fueled the false narrative.

“Another Orthodox church burned down in Ukraine,” stated a
Facebook post from the Russian Embassy in London published on Friday, which was later deleted. “This
time a cruel fate befell a church of the canonical UOC in the village of
Novopoltavka. The footage shows people watching in horror at the burning
church, which was set on fire by either security forces or dissenters,” the
false post read.

The false claims also spread on Twitter and Telegram.

However, the video is a decade old and shows a church ablaze in
Russia, not Ukraine.

A YouTube account posted the same video of the fire with a Russian caption that stated “burning church in Ilyinka” on
Jan. 22, 2013, along with several other videos capturing alternate angles of the fire. A website belonging to the Volodarsky district, in Russia’s Astrakhan
region, describes a blaze at the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in Ilyinka that same day.

The church was rebuilt a few years later, as seen in a YouTube
video posted on Jan. 28, 2016 by a local news outlet in the Astrakhan
region.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) declared
independence from Moscow’s Patriarchate, who it was loyal to since the 17th
century, the AP reported. But Ukrainian
security agencies claim that the UOC keeps close ties with Russia and they have
carried out raids of the church’s holy sites, sharing photos of rubles and
Russian passports, along with leaflets with messages from the Moscow
patriarch. Prominent Ukrainian Orthodox Church leaders have rejected the allegations of ties with Moscow, insisting they have supported Ukraine from the start of the war and that a government crackdown will only hand a propaganda coup to Russia.

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This is part of AP’s effort to
address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and
organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating
online. Learn more about
fact-checking at AP.