Does a video circulating on social media show an accident that killed 50 soldiers when a truck crashed into a convoy of Russian military buses in the Moscow region? No, that's not true: The video shows a road accident that took place in January 2021. Four servicemen were killed in the crash.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on April 28, 2023, by the pro-Ukrainian account @shups30. The same video was shared by numerous accounts on the same platform here, here, and here.
The caption on the video, translated from Ukrainian by Lead Stories staff, claims:
Near Moscow,
a truck driver
crashes into a convoy of
Russian Federation military buses.
Thank you very much, -50
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu May 11 16:27:58 2023 UTC)
The video is also being shared on Ukrainian Telegram channels, here or here, for example.
This is an old video, taken on January 11, 2021. It shows an accident involving a dump truck and a convoy of military buses carrying conscripts near Moscow on the Novorizhskoye highway. Due to a breakdown, the convoy stopped on the road. The truck, which was traveling at high speed, didn't have time to hit the brakes and crashed into the convoy. At least four people were killed and more than 40 were injured.
One of the first to report on the accident was the Russian Telegram emergency information channel @ENews112. The audio and the images shown on the channel are the same as in the video shared more than two years later on TikTok.
The collision occurred more than a year before Russia invaded Ukraine - not in April 2023, as viewers are led to believe watching the TikTok video - and 50 soldiers were not killed in the crash.
