A photo of the Kremlin with most of its lights out shows an electricity shortage in Moscow.
The photo shows the Kremlin without lights as part of the ‘Earth Hour’ campaign to raise awareness for climate change. A draft document by the Russian Power System Operator does warn of a future electricity shortage resulting from Western sanctions.
A photo showing the Kremlin without any lights on is being shared on social media alongside claims Moscow faces a severe electricity shortage due to Western sanctions.
One post sharing the photo says: “BREAKING Russia: Moscow remains dark due to severe electricity shortage The reason is reported to be in difficulties at servicing foreign turbines at Russian thermal power plants due to Western sanctions [sic]”. Other posts have almost identical text.
But the photo does not show a recent electricity shortage—it was shared in a 2014 article about ‘Earth Hour’, the annual WWF event that encourages people to turn off non-essential lights—such as those on famous landmarks—to raise awareness for climate change. Similar images show the Kremlin during Earth Hour in 2013.
There are many videos showing the Kremlin marking Earth Hour in the years since it first participated in 2013. The Kremlin reportedly did not participate in the most recent 2024 Earth Hour after the WWF was labelled a “foreign agent” by the country’s authorities.
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There were reports in January 2024 of an outage leaving one town near Moscow without heating and hot water in extremely low temperatures, but this was reportedly owing to a burst pipe.
President Putin warned in July 2024 that unregulated cryptocurrency mining risks causing widespread power outages by overloading Russia’s electric grid.
Moreover, according to a draft document by the Russian Power System Operator, Moscow may face an electricity shortage in the future due to difficulties servicing foreign equipment, such as gas turbines for thermal power plants, because of Western sanctions.
As of February 2024, there were reportedly 16,500 sanctions on Russia by countries including the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan, as well as the EU, since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Images being shared with incorrect or misleading captions is a common form of misinformation we see online—our guide provides tips for identifying misleading images yourself. You can also find more of our work checking claims relating to the war in 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 missing context because the photo shows the Kremlin with its lights off for WWF’s Earth Hour campaign, and was shared at least as early as 2014.
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