This Facebook post with a video purportedly of Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to Russians is FALSE.

The post reads: “Surrendering Ukrainians get to be a part of the future instead of dying in the past (the US empire in decline). Russia needs to take these men in and help them find a future, if it sends them back to Kiev they will just be sent into the meat grinder again.”

The neighbouring countries have been at war since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. There have been several instances of soldiers from both countries surrendering since the war began.

A separation of the keyframes on video verification tool InVid WeVerify followed by an image reverse search on Yandex, indicates that the footage is of a prisoner swap between the two countries.

A YouTube video with similar features to the video in the 28 May 2023-dated claim bears the title, “New footage of prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia — Over 100 soldiers were returned”.

A Google search for the keywords “Russia Ukraine prisoner swap” established a different angle of the footage published by DW on 26 May 2023 titled, “Ukraine, Russia swap prisoners near Bakhmut.”

The video’s description reads: “Russia and Ukraine have carried out a prisoner swap near the contested city of Bakhmut. More than 100 Ukrainian soldiers were returned in the exchange, and Wagner’s commander Yevgeny Prigozhin appeared to be welcoming returned Russian soldiers.”

The drone footage of the prisoner swap was also shared by The Telegraph with the title, “Wagner exchange prisoners of war with Ukraine.”

PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post with a video purportedly of Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to Russians and finds it to be FALSE.

This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.

By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.

Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.

This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker Peris Gachahi and edited by PesaCheck Senior Copy Editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.

The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.

PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.

PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.