A video on Facebook appears to show a number of bodies in body bags, and a person in one of the bags smoking a cigarette. The video’s audio says: “Dead bodies in Ukraine smoking cigarette”.
Text over the video says “Sky news and the media bulsh** lies. Don’t believe everything see [sic]”.
The implication seems to be that the man smoking is some sort of ‘crisis actor’, which is a phrase often used by those spreading false information online to describe someone who is paid to feign illness or death, perhaps in front of news cameras, to further an agenda.
However, the video was not taken recently. It first appeared on TikTok in March 2021. It has a caption in Russian, translated by Google, that says: “Filming a Husky clip – Never ever”. Another clip shared by the account appears to be from the same project.
The TikTok account appears to belong to Vasya Ivanov, whose bio describes him as a “production designer | art Director”.
‘Husky’ is a Russian rapper, whose 2020 music video for his song ‘Never ever’ features the body bags. The full music video on YouTube shows a similar looking orange container full of body bags, and the TikTok user, Vasya Ivanov is credited in the YouTube description as the video’s production designer.
There’s no evidence Sky News or any other news outlet broadcast this footage claiming it showed the situation in Ukraine.
We have checked other claims about ‘crisis actors’ before.
If you’d like to learn more about how to check the validity of viral videos, you can read our blog post on the subject.