Video shows Russian missile launch in White Sea, not off Florida coast | Fact check
Joedy McCrearyThe claim: Video shows Russian military activity 66 miles off Florida coast
A June 12 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) includes a video showing four missiles launching from an apparatus in a body of water.
“Breaking Russia conducting marine exercises with nuclear submarines just 66 miles off the coast of Florida,” text in the video reads in part.
The post received more than 3,000 likes in a day. Versions of the claim also were shared widely on Facebook and X, formerly Twitter.
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Our rating: False
The video is from 2018 and shows a missile launch in the White Sea near Russia.
Old video shows Russian missile launch in White Sea
The Pentagon is watching Russian warships that arrived in Cuba on June 12. While the ships are conducting military exercises in the Caribbean, they are not considered a threat, a Defense Department spokesperson said. The move comes amid heightened tensions between Russia and the U.S. over the war in Ukraine.
But that's not what is shown in the Instagram video. Rather, the post shows a missile launch in the White Sea in 2018.
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Voice of America posted the video to YouTube on May 23, 2018. The caption states that it shows the test-firing of four intercontinental ballistic missiles from a Russian submarine in the White Sea in northeast Russia on May 22 of that year.
The mock warheads launched from the Yuri Dolgoruky reached their practice targets on the Kamchatka Peninsula on the opposite side of Russia, the U.S. Navy said, according to an Associated Press story about the launch posted by Defense News.
The video in the social media post includes two elements that appear in the one from 2018 – the Voice of America watermark in the upper-right corner and a Russian Ministry of Defense credit in the upper-left corner.
Russian military threats have spawned misinformation on social media. USA TODAY has previously debunked false claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to support Iran if the U.S retaliates against that nation and that a video showed Putin warning the U.S. about interfering in the Israel-Hamas war.
USA TODAY reached out to several social media users who shared the video but did not immediately receive responses.
Our fact-check sources:
- Voice of America (YouTube), May 23, 2018, Russian Ministry of Defense released a VIDEO of nuclear submarine test-fired of 4 ballistic missiles
- The Associated Press (Defense News), May 23, 2018, See a Russian sub test-fire 4 ICBMs
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