Video shows submerged houses in Russia, not Thailand

Published on September 9, 2025 at 06:57
3 min read
By Chayanit ITTHIPONGMAETEE, AFP Thailand

An old video of submerged houses in Russia has resurfaced in Khmer-language posts falsely claiming it shows flooding in northern Thailand after consecutive storms hit the region. The footage has in fact circulated since April 2024, when whole villages and cities in Russia's southern Urals and western Siberia were engulfed by overflowing rivers.

"Hot and fresh as of 02/09/25: Flooding in Chiang Rai, Thailand. Water has reached rooftop levels -- about six metres deep, higher than a person's head," reads the Khmer-language caption of a Facebook video shared on September 2, 2025 by a page with more than 83,000 followers.

The clip shows rows of submerged houses, with only their roofs still visible.

Screenshot of the false Facebook post captured on September 4, 2025, with a red X added by AFP

The same footage was also shared in similar Khmer-language posts on TikTok and Facebook, while a Thai-language post claimed the clip shows flooding in Cambodia.

Social media users from the rival countries have traded barbs online since the neighbours engaged in five days of fighting over a longstanding border conflict (archived link).

The clip circulated after Typhoon Kajiki and Storm Nongfa brought heavy rain and flooding to several northern provinces in Thailand, with the Bangkok Post reporting that at least seven people were killed in a landslide in Chiang Mai (archived here and here).

Parts of northwestern Cambodia were also affected; The Phnom Penh Post reported the deluge triggered flooding, though officials said the damage was not severe (archived link).

The circulating footage, however, was not shot in either Southeast Asian country.

A reverse image search on Russian search engine Yandex using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same clip posted on YouTube on April 14, 2024 (archived link).

Part of the Russian-language title of the video reads: "This is what is happening in our village of Ivanovka, houses are underwater."

At the beginning of the video, someone can be heard speaking in Russian: "Village Ivanovka. 12 April. Residential complex in the Urals."

Screenshot comparison between the false Facebook post (left) and the YouTube video posted in April 2024 (right)

Similar images were also shared in a BBC report from April 12, 2024, which said floods in the Russian city of Orenburg raised water levels to two metres above critical and left "just the roofs of some houses showing" (archived link).

Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared clip (left) and an image used in the BBC report from April 12, 2024 (right)

Elements of the clip, including the blue and red roofs, also match Google Earth imagery of the village near Orenburg (archived link).

AFP earlier debunked posts shared by Thai users in September 2024 who falsely claimed the clip showed flooding in Chiang Rai province caused by a burst dam in China.

Posts claiming the same clip shows flooding in other countries, including Kenya, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates, have also previously been debunked by other fact-checking organisations (archived here, here and here).

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail