Images purporting to show the explosion of a bridge in Ukraine are very relayed on social networks, but in reality they do not show what caused the collapse of the dam on Tuesday June 6.
It is a video that has been circulating for several days on social networks, always accompanied by a message saying that this is the moment when the Kakhovka dam was hit by strikes and exploded, on Monday night June 5 to Tuesday June 6. The black and white images, filmed from the site’s hydroelectric power station video surveillance camera, were even relayed by several French media, such as the Huffington Post, BFMTV and France 2, before they deleted their publications. Because if the video is real, it does not date from this week.
🔴 #KakhovkaDam :
The moment of the explosion of the dam of #Kakhovka#RussianUkrainianWar pic.twitter.com/Wk0pz4sf8z
— Peonia (@CalliFanciulla) June 6, 2023
Explosions dating from November 2022
If we look for it in the Internet archives, we find it last November, published in particular by the Russian information site Izvestia on its Telegram account and by several Internet users, as noted by the Twitter account of cartographic surveys Geoconfirmed.
The images actually show explosions that hit this same dam on November 11, 2022, just after the withdrawal of Russian forces from Kherson. The Maxar satellite had been able to photograph the damage caused to the northern part of the bridge just after and several media, including the Reuters agency, had echoed it.
New #satellite images (November 11, 2022, 10:25am local time) show significant damage to the Nova Kakhovka dam, near #Kherson, #Ukraine, with sections of the dam and sluice gates destroyed. https://t.co/msSBBI6h7h pic.twitter.com/yYkXOM1SIf
—Maxar Technologies (@Maxar) November 11, 2022
But at that time, the dam had not yielded, it was still holding. In addition, the dam collapsed rather on the south side, this week, at the level of the hydroelectric plant, as shown by numerous verified images.
Be careful with images
In November, the explosions had not been claimed, Ukrainians and Russians accused each other, as they do again this week, after the collapse of the dam, and as has happened regularly since the beginning of the war almost a year and a half ago.
The use of this video to show what it is not, by Internet users who themselves sometimes accuse Ukraine, sometimes Russia, reminds us of the extent to which this is also a communication war and calls for the greatest vigilance in the face of images circulating on social networks.