2012 Video From Palestine Shared as Ukrainian Girl Confronting Russian Soldier

The 2012 video showed Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi standing up to an Israeli soldier.

Fact-Check | The viral video doesn't show a Ukrainian girl confronting a Russian soldier

(Photo:Twitter/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

A video showing a young girl confronting a soldier has gone viral with a claim that it shows an eight-year-old Ukrainian girl arguing with a Russian soldier.

The claim comes amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began on Thursday, 24 February. The Russian attack was met with fierce resistance not only from the Ukrainian army but also civilians, who were seen taking up arms to defend their country.

However, the viral video was not a recent one and neither did it have anything to do with Ukraine and Russia. The 10-year-old video showed Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi confronting Israeli soldiers in Palestine.

Catch all the live updates on the Russia-Ukraine tensions here.

CLAIM

The caption with the viral video and screenshot of the video read, "An 8 year Ukraine girl confronts a Russian soldier telling him to go back to his country. This is courage simplicitta. (sic)".

The video was also shared by news channel NDTV Hindi's website.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

The claim was widely shared on Facebook and Twitter. Some of the archives can be seen here, here, and here.

We also received the viral image as a query on our WhatsApp tipline.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We fragmented the video into multiple keyframes using InVid Google Chrome extension and followed it up with a reverse search using Yandex which led us to a tweet by 24 TV, a Turkish news broadcaster, from 20 December 2017.

The caption, when translated, mentioned, "The Palestinian little girl Ahed Tamimi, whom the world knew with these images of defiance of Israeli soldiers, was detained again."

We then conducted a keyword search for "Ahed Tamimi punching Israeli soldier" and found several news articles around it.

A BBC news report from 17 January 2018 carried an image of Tamimi, which showed her confronting a soldier. The report noted that she has become a figure of resistance for many Palestinians, against the Israeli occupation.

The image showed Ahed Tamimi.

(Source: BBC/Screenshot)

On conducting another reverse image search on this picture, we found it on Getty images – a stock image website.

The image was from November 2012 and the caption mentioned that it showed Tamimi standing up to an Israeli soldier against "confiscation of Palestinian land by Israel in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh."

The photograph showed Ahed Tamimi gesturing to punch a soldier. 

(Source: Getty Images/Screenshot)

We also found the viral video posted on YouTube on 25 December 2012.

Evidently, an old video showing a Palestinian girl confront an Israeli soldier has gone viral with a claim that it shows a Ukrainian girl standing up to Russian soldiers.

We have been actively debunking misinformation related to the ongoing conflict between Russia-Ukraine. You can read all our stories here.

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