A video (here, here, here, and here) showing a black car exploding on a road is being shared on social media platforms with the claim that it depicts an electric (EV) car exploding in Uttar Pradesh, India. In this article, let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video shows an electric (EV) car exploding in Uttar Pradesh, India.
Fact: This viral video is not related to Uttar Pradesh or India. It shows a car blast caused by an explosive device planted under the vehicle, which resulted in the death of Russian naval officer Valery Trankovsky. The incident occurred in Russian-controlled Crimea in November 2024. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To gather details about the viral video, we conducted a Google reverse image search which led us to a video (archived link) uploaded on a verified YouTube channel named ‘Mail News’, which belongs to the UK media house ‘Daily Mail’. The video was uploaded on 17 December 2024 with the title: ‘Russian Naval Officer Valery Trankovsky is Killed in Car Bomb Assassination’. The video description stated that it shows a Russian Navy officer killed in a car bomb explosion carried out by Ukraine in Crimea. The same video was also uploaded to the Daily Mail’s website (archived link).
Taking this as a cue, we conducted a relevant keyword search and found multiple news reports (here, here, and here) from November 2024, featuring the viral clip. According to these reports, the viral video shows the moment of a car bomb explosion in Sevastopol, Russian-controlled Crimea, which killed Russian Senior Naval Officer Valery Trankovsky, the chief of staff of the 41st Missile Brigade of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet. A Guardian report dated 13 November 2024 stated that the Ukrainian secret services orchestrated the assassination in the Russian-controlled port city of Sevastopol, resulting in the death of Valery Trankovsky on 13 November 2024.
Additional news reports about this incident can be found here, here, here, here, and here. Based on all this information, it is evident that the viral video depicts a car bomb explosion in Sevastopol, Russian-controlled Crimea, in November 2024. Furthermore, we did not find any recent reports of such electric (EV) car explosions in Uttar Pradesh, India.
To sum it up, a video showing the assassination of a Russian naval officer in Russian-controlled Crimea is being falsely shared as an EV car explosion in Uttar Pradesh.
