No, this video does not show two Russian submarines received by the Philippines
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 30, 2019 at 08:00
- 3 min read
- By AFP Philippines
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The Youtube video, published on October 9, 2018 here, is titled "Proudly the Philippines received two submarines which were not easy for other countries to get it!".
It has also been shared around 500 times on Facebook since it was posted here in mid-July.
Below is a screengrab of the video:
The text accompanying the video says in part: “The admiralty shipyard is currently building 6 project units 636.3 SECONDARY SHIP FOR PACIFIC FLOOR, RUSSIAN SEA FORCE, with chronology scheduled to complete the order of 2022.”
It adds that “Lorenzana’s announcement of the chronology of having a decision and signing a contract within 12 months could be a requirement made by Russia, because Russia wanted to know if they needed to adjust their own orders to accommodate their promise that they could deliver submarines 4 years after signing the contract.”
Lorenzana refers to the Philippines’ defence minister, Delfin Lorenzana.
When asked by AFP via text message on July 25, 2019 whether the Philippines has any agreement with Russia to buy its submarines, Lorenzana replied: “No”.
He added that the claim the Philippines received Russian vessels is false.
“Fake news! No, we have not received any submarines from anybody,” Lorenzana said.
Russian footage
The misleading video shows the logo of Ruptly, a Russian video news agency, in the bottom left-hand corner. A voiceover can be heard in the report saying the Philippines received two submarines.
A reverse search of screenshots from the video using online verification tool InVid traced the footage back to three Russian news reports: two Ruptly reports here and here, and this report from armed forces network Zvezda.
These video reports say nothing about the Philippines receiving Russian submarines.
Below is a comparison of the clips in the misleading post (L) with the clips from the 2014 Ruptly video report (R) about Russia's new diesel-electric submarine Rostov-on-Don:
Here is a comparison of the clips used in the misleading post (L) with footage from the 2017 Ruptly video report (R) about the Krasnodar submarine arriving at the port of Sevastopol and joining the Russian Black Sea Fleet:
And below is a comparison of the clips used in the misleading post (L) with footage from the 2017 video report from the Zvezda TV channel (R) about the Project 638 Varshavyanka diesel-electric submarines:
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