A video is being shared on social media claiming it as the recent visuals of Russian President Vladimir Putin interacting with the Indian nationals being evacuated from Ukraine. This post claims that Putin had directly gone to the Indian nationals on board Air India flight and convinced them about their ongoing war with Ukraine. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of Vladimir Putin interacting with the evacuated Indian nationals from Ukraine.
Fact: The man in the video interacting with the evacuated Indian nationals from Ukraine is Indian Ambassador to Romania, Rahul Shrivastava. Several Union Ministers and prominent news channels have published this video on 26 February 2022. This video has nothing to do with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of the screenshots in the video, a video with similar visuals was found tweeted by the ‘ET Now’ news channel on 26 February 2022. ‘ET Now’ reported it as visuals of the Indian Ambassador to Romania, Rahul Shrivastava, interacting with the evacuated Indian nationals from Ukraine. ‘DD News’ channel had tweeted the same video and said that Rahul Shrivastava had gone inside the Air India flight and interacted with the evacuated Indian Nationals on their way to Mumbai from Ukraine.
Several Union Ministers have shared this video on 26 February 2022. They can be seen here and here. ‘The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting’ YouTube channel too published the video of Rahul Shrivatsava’s interaction with Indian nationals aboard an Air India flight in Romania. Recent pictures of Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiradithya Scindia interacting with Rahul Shrivastava about the ongoing Indian nationals’ evacuation operations can be seen here. There are no reports of Russia President Putin interacting with the evacuated Indian Nationals from Ukraine.
To sum it up, the video of the Indian Ambassador to Romania interacting with the evacuated Indian nationals from Ukraine is falsely linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
