Fact Check: Did 'Sinking' Russian Ship Send SOS Signal to German Navy?

The destruction of a multi-million dollar Russian missile cruiser stationed in Crimea has become the latest in a series of setbacks for Moscow forces, whose military infrastructure in Crimea has been repeatedly attacked in the past few months.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on Thursday that its forces struck a Russian supersonic missile-armed corvette, dubbed the Ivanovets, during an attack on a Crimean airbase the day prior. The strike was carried out by "Group 13" of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, according to the MoD.

As news rolled in on the reported attack, a video was shared widely on social media claiming to have captured audio from the ship itself.

The Claim

A post on X, formerly Twitter, by user @BrennpunktUA, on February 1, 2024, viewed 579,900 times, showed a video of a ship, its bow crashing into the sea.

@BrennpunktUA posted alongside "#Breaking—Russian warship that was attacked by 🇺🇦 navy kamikaze drones sent SOS to German coast guard.—here is the recording."

Audio in the background can be heard between two people. One says "Hello this is the German coast guard." The other responds "We are sinking!" The "coast guard" replies "What are you thinking about?"

The Facts

Amid news of the Russian corvette attack, it may be tempting to think that at least part of the media from the clip was recorded during the incident in the Black Sea

However, neither the footage nor, somewhat less surprisingly, the audio, has anything to do with the incident.

The audio is taken from an ad from the Berlitz language learning service. The ad, created in 2006, was ranked 87th by advertising industry outlet The Drum in its 2022 list of the "World's best ads."

The clip and accompanying audio have been spliced together before and have been online at the very least since August 27, 2022.

Reverse image searches do not reveal where the footage of the ship is from. In any case, it has nothing to do with the incident reported in Crimea.

In a post to Facebook, Ukraine's navy touted the destruction of the Ivanovets missile boat as a "pretty significant loss considering" the ship was one of three boats of its kind in Putin's fleet. The small warship is equipped with anti-ship missiles with a range of more than 80 miles, according to the post. Ukraine's MoD estimated that the Ivanovets was worth up to $70 million.

The Ruling

False.

The clip of the "German coast guard" uses audio from a 2006 ad for language learning service Berlitz. The clip of the ship crashing into the sea, spliced with the audio, has been online since at least August 2022 and has nothing to do with the attack on a Russian warship reported near Crimea.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team