Video of Kazakhstan military training spread to claim China-India clash
A video has spread on Facebook claiming to show an exchange of fire between the Chinese and Indian armies on the border. However, Dismislab’s fact-check found the claim false. The video shows a military training exercise in Kazakhstan.
On October 25, a Facebook page named “Bichitra News” posted the video. The 35-second video shows several people in army uniforms exchanging fire in a hilly area. The caption claimed, “Exchange of fire between the Chinese and Indian armies on the border!”
As of the report’s publication, the post had received more than 12,700 reactions. The video had been shared more than 250 times and viewed more than 400,000 times.
The video was also found to have spread with the same claim from several Facebook pages (1, 2) and personal accounts (1, 2).
In its investigation, Dismislab conducted a reverse image search on keyframes of the video. The search turned up an Instagram post from July 28 this year. An account named “Tactical Federation” posted the exact same video, with a caption reading, “The Tactical Training Federation continues its patriotic mission! At the ‘Koktal’ training center in the city of Zharkent, the Tactical Training Federation provided training to soldiers of the Special Operations Forces of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Kazakhstan.”
In the footage, “AOK-CCA” can be seen written on the uniforms of two people in military dress. AOK (Арнайы операциялар күштері) is an elite force branch of Kazakhstan’s armed forces. The Russian-language version of the same force’s name is abbreviated as CCO (Силы специальных операций).
In other words, the video is not of the Chinese and Indian armies. It shows a military training exercise in Kazakhstan.
