A video of a failed grenade launcher does not show Russian army

A video on Facebook showing soldiers unsuccessfully discharging a rocket propelled grenade launcher, has the caption: “Russian soldiers using weapons that have been in a cupboard since soviet times”. It’s been viewed over 2.4 million times.

But evidence suggests that these aren’t Russian soldiers. We found a longer version of the video on YouTube, which was uploaded on 23 February 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine started on 24 February. If you want to learn more about how we track down original videos, read our blog post on the topic.

The longer version of the video shows military personnel running for cover after the equipment fails, and some laughing afterwards, which doesn’t appear in the Facebook version. 

The YouTube video’s title is “KDF officers Escape death after their RPG failed to launch”. KDF is short for Kenya Defence Forces. Two military experts told fact checker Lead Stories that the video was unlikely to have been filmed in Ukraine, and instead the uniforms suggest it showed Kenyan soldiers.

Nick Reynolds, a research analyst for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute think tank told Lead Stories: “I'm certain that they are Kenyan forces in the video, not Russian. In the interest of dispelling any ambiguity, the body armour design is the key giveaway that leads me to that conclusion, but everything else correlates too.” 

He added: “The only possibly Russian thing in the video is the RPG-7 launcher, but it is loaded with a verifiably Chinese warhead; both of these are known to be in the Kenyan Defence Forces' arsenal, so no surprises there.”

Additionally, the longer clip shows that all the soldiers are black and are not speaking Russian, which further suggests this is not the Russian army.