Fake: "Bears went for a walk right along a road in western Ukraine"

Fake: “Bears went for a walk right along a road in western Ukraine”. A video with this headline was posted on the Facebook page of Glavred Novosti on November 30, and as expected, social media were cited as its source.

Despite garnering more than 200 comments and 62,000 views, no one seemed to question the authenticity of the video. That’s where we stepped in.

So, how did we get to the truth concerning the video’s origin? 

First, we captured several screenshots from the video footage and submitted them to the online tool Tineye, which pinpoints the initial appearance of photos. 

This led us to discover that these images had already been posted on the Bulgarian website Plovdiv 24 chasa on November 27, 2023 (Plovdiv is a city in Bulgaria).

Interestingly, in their article, the Bulgarian journalists themselves denied that the video was shot in their country and pointed a finger at Romania: 

“A video is circulating on social media showing two bears walking along a snowy road. According to users, it was filmed in Pamporovo (a mountain resort in Bulgaria). However, it turned out that the video was outdated and was probably filmed in Romania a long time ago.”

A day later, the video found its way onto Boris Bozhinov’s YouTube channel. Bozhinov claims that the video footage was indeed captured on the way to Pamporovo, in Bulgaria. 

The source of this video in the Ukrainian information space, Glavred Novosti, is a russian-language page linked to a similarly named website of questionable quality known for publishing horoscopes and astrological forecasts. In addition, the initial caption of the video read “in western Ukraine,” employing a typical russian propaganda construct. There is no such thing as western Ukraine. There is only one Ukraine. Following complaints of some readers, the caption was later modified