Footage began circulating last night from the riots that took place in Kyiv back in 2014. It shows civilians using Molotov cocktails against two armored vehicles, and is not from the current conflict.

We don't like being the fact check police, but this footage was being spread so far and wide last night that we need to bring it up this morning. It's still circulating as current information coming out of the region as well, which is the only reason we're bringing it up.

If you see the footage above circulating as current, please call it out as fake. In 2014 there were massive protests in Kyiv. The protests were called The Revolution of Dignity. and were they where overwhelmingly antigovernmental. We suspect this footage was released into Telegram channels by the Russians, and then subsequently to Twitter and Reddit by amateur data collectors hoping to gain internet fame by being the first person to break this story.

It's likely that the Russians knew this footage would take off, be spread, and then get called out. The calling out of the footage is the ultimate objective of the Russians however, as they would like the world to remember a time in which the people of Ukraine were against their own government so they can try and win some sort of favor in the on-going conflict in the region.

The key indicators you should be looking for in footage coming out of Ukraine are as follows. How high is the video quality? Footage that has been ripped and reuploaded multiple times will have several layers of compression, decreasing the footage quality far below 240p. Current footage of civilians in Ukraine is primarily being shot from safe locations, like inside of apartments or moving vehicles. Should the fighting move to the streets of Kyiv proper, expect to see the civilians armed with more than wooden shields and Molotovs, they were just given 18,000 rifles yesterday.

Last, before you reupload footage and take a risk on it, ask yourself some common sense questions about the footage. Does it make sense in the current context of what we already know on a macro level? Do conventional military tactics by themselves make the footage suspect? Are the people in the video screaming Islamic phrases like "Takbir" and "Allahu Akbar" while being in a dominantly sandy area? If the answer to these questions doesn't make sense, there's a high probability that you should doubt the legitimacy of the footage.

Also, please stop DMing me this footage on Discord.