A video claiming to show Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Rahul R Singh admitting that India lost two S-400 defence systems during a military escalation with Pakistan in May 2025 has gone viral on social media (here, here, and here). Let’s verify the truth behind the video in this article.
Claim: The video shows Lt Gen Rahul R Singh admitting India lost two S-400 systems during the May 2025 military escalation with Pakistan.
Fact: The viral video of Lt Gen Rahul R Singh admitting India lost two S-400 systems during the May 2025 military escalation with Pakistan is digitally altered. In the original video from a FICCI event on 04 July 2025, Lt Gen Singh did not mention any loss of S-400 systems or negotiations with Russia. A PIB Fact Check X post from 10 May 2025 also confirms this. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the authenticity of the viral video, we performed a reverse image search of keyframes, which led us to a video report by Republic World dated 04 July 2025. The video shows Lt Gen Rahul R Singh speaking at an event organised by FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry), whose logo is visible in the background of the viral visuals. We reviewed the full video and found that around the 16-minute timestamp, Lt Gen Singh says: “…few lessons that I thought I must flag as far as Operation Sindoor is concerned. Firstly, one border, two adversaries. So we saw Pakistan on one side, but adversaries were two—or actually four or three, actually. So Pakistan was the front face. We had China providing all possible support, and it’s no surprise because if you were to look at statistics, in the last five years, 81% of the military hardware that Pakistan is getting is all Chinese, 81% of that…”
However, he does not mention anything about India losing S-400 systems during the May 2025 military escalation with Pakistan or any negotiations with Russia to replace them, as claimed in the viral video. These lines appear to have been digitally inserted.
A press release issued by FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) on 04 July 2025, detailing Lt Gen Rahul R Singh’s address at the event, made no mention of India losing S-400 systems or any negotiations with Russia to procure them.
We also came across an X post by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) Fact Check dated 10 May 2025, which stated that “reports of destruction or any damage to an S-400 system are baseless.” During a press conference following the ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad on the same day, Colonel Sofiya Qureshi also dismissed Pakistan’s claim, saying, “Pakistan claimed that it damaged our S-400 and BrahMos missile base with its JF-17, which is completely false.”
To sum up, this viral video of Lt Gen Rahul R Singh admitting India lost two S-400 systems during the May 2025 escalation with Pakistan is digitally altered.
