Footage of gas pipe explosion in Russia falsely linked to Middle East war
- Published on June 26, 2026 at 08:32
- 3 min read
- By Sammy HEUNG, AFP Hong Kong
As the United States and Iran prepared for talks in mid-June aimed at ending the Middle East war, footage circulated online claiming to show an Israeli strike on an oil refinery in the Islamic republic. While Israel has bombed Iranian oil facilities in the past, the clip in fact depicts a gas explosion in Russia, with elements in the footage matching Yandex street view imagery of the Russian region of Kizilyurt.
"Trump is going to be cursing again: Israel strikes Iran's largest oil refinery. According to reports, Israel has launched an attack on Iran’s largest oil refinery, marking a major escalation in tensions," reads an X post in simplified Chinese on June 17, 2026.
The video in the post shows a few people watching a huge blaze erupting behind some buildings. The camera then pans to plumes of smoke in the sky.
Similar claims also appeared on YouTube, and in English, Arabic and Portuguese.
The video started circulating as Washington and Tehran signed on June 18 a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the Middle East war -- launched by the United States and Israel in late February -- with Iran agreeing to dilute its enriched uranium in return for large-scale economic relief (archived link).
When the first-round talks concluded on June 22, Vice President JD Vance said they had laid a "very good foundation for a successful final deal" (archived link).
But Gulf countries and Israel have longstanding concerns about Iran's support for proxies in the region and its missile programme, and it remains unclear whether those topics will be handled in the talks.
Against the backdrop of ongoing negotiations for a final peace deal, Israeli forces have continued fighting in Lebanon, launching airstrikes and clashing with Iran-backed Hezbollah (archived here and here).
Social media users who thought the X post was true commented: "Netanyahu has no choice. If he doesn’t keep fighting, he’ll end up in prison."
"Israel, well done, that deal needs to be wrecked. Iran must not get that 300 billion dollars," another person wrote.
While Israel had in April struck Tehran's largest petrochemical facility, the footage circulating was not filmed in Iran (archived link).
Explosion in Russia's Kizilyurt
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the video shows it circulated on June 10 on Facebook pages that track Russia's invasion of Ukraine (archived here and here).
Captions on the posts say they show an explosion in the Kizilyurt region in Russia.
Another video showing the same explosion was also posted on Facebook on June 9 (archived link).
Ukraine often targets Russian energy infrastructure in the war, but Russian state outlet RIA Novosti said in a report the explosion had been caused by a depressurised section of a main gas pipeline between the villages of Bavtugai and Gelbakh, according to the local government (archived here and here).
By searching "Kizilyurt" on Yandex Maps, its street view imagery shows the same structural arch above the roads that appears in the video (archived link). The reversed letters on top of the arch, which means Kizilyurt, match with what is seen in the video.
The second arch, in front of the welcome arch in the video, matches with a blue arch that is located further down the same road on the map (archived link). The same transmission tower and white structure can be seen on the left of the arch.
The location of the person who filmed the video can also be pinpointed near a gas station (archived link). The same yellow and red curb on the right side of the road and the brown billboard in front of the curb can be found around the 23-second mark of the clip.
AFP has debunked other misinformation related to the Middle East war.
Copyright © AFP 2017-2026. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
