Old photo of military exercise used to illustrate story about Russia’s war in Ukraine

The Russian news outlet Pravda recently shared a story on Facebook that claimed the Ukrainian army had been "destroyed almost entirely." 

The Sept. 21 post featured a link to a news story with a photo that appears to show three soldiers crouching in a trench, dressed in combat uniforms and bearing machine guns. A barbed-wire fence and plumes of orange smoke can be seen behind them. 

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Given the post's claim that Ukraine will "capitulate by early 2023," Facebook users might think the photo shows recent fighting in Eastern Europe, where Ukrainians have been trying to fight off a Russian invasion.  

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“NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says that ‘if Trump surrenders Ukraine to Putin, he will personally expel the United States from the alliance.’”

But the image is old; it was posted on the website of the Russia news outlet Sputnik in 2017. Its caption read: "Marines of the Pacific Fleet of the Russian Federation and servicemen of a special unit of the Indian Armed Forces are disembarking at the stage of the first interspecific Russian-Indian exercises ‘Indra-2017’ at the landing range ‘Clerk.’"

The joint military exercise involved Indian and Russian armed forces and it was conducted in Russia’s eastern military district from Oct. 19 to Oct. 29, 2017, according to a press release from India’s defense ministry. 

Returning to the present, the BBC reported Sept. 20 that Ukrainian forces have "made rapid gains in recent days and have recaptured territory in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine." Russian forces still control about a fifth of Ukraine, BBC said. 

We rate claims that this photo shows recent fighting in Ukraine False.