Does a video showing a destroyed city highlight the "present situation" in Ukraine during the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict? No, that's not true: The video used as evidence of the "present situation" is footage from at least 2020 that seems to show the aftermath of explosions in Lebanon.
The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) on March 7, 2022. It had a video of a city with severely damaged infrastructure. Translated from French, the title of the video read:
Ukraine Present Situation successfully hit ukraine again
This is what the post looked like on Facebook on March 7, 2022:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Mar 7 16:14 2022 UTC)
Although Lead Stories could not determine the origin of the video, several other versions of the video were posted online in 2020 (here, here and a shortened version here). The captions of these videos all claim that the footage shows the aftermath of a pair of explosions at the Port of Beirut in Lebanon. Those explosions took place on August 4, 2020, and killed more than 200 people.
The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine began in late February 2022, much later than the aforementioned appearances of the video online. While there have been several destructive attacks on Ukraine from Russia that have left hundreds of Ukrainians injured or dead, this video is not representative of that conflict.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict can be found here.
