29 October 2026 Fact check

AI mushroom cloud video shared with false claims it shows Ukraine

By Sian Bayley • Conflict • 1 min

What was claimed

A video of a large mushroom cloud shows events in Ukraine.

Our verdict

This video isn’t real and was made with AI.

A video of a dramatic mushroom cloud explosion has been shared online with captions saying “tonight could be Ukraine’s last night” and listing supposed military losses.

But this video isn’t real. It was made with artificial intelligence (AI) and has been circulating online for more than a year.

Debunk image AI generated nuclear explosion

Using reverse image search we traced the video to a 2025 AFP fact check about the clip being shared with claims it showed an Iranian nuclear weapons test.

AFP found the video was first shared on YouTube on 16 May 2025 and was labelled as an “AI video”. That version has since been deleted.

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We also ran the video through Meta’s AI detector, which said “AI signatures were found”.

We could find no reports that 10 Ukrainian fighter jets and two airbases were destroyed or that 500 soldiers were killed in one night either, as the posts appear to claim.

It can be difficult to tell what is real online. Our toolkit can help you check if a clip is authentic before sharing.

Tags

Social media Ukraine

This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because this video isn’t real and was made with artificial intelligence.