A volcano in Russia’s far east erupted hours after a robust 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Kamchatka area, however a video of effervescent lava in a crater was the truth is filmed in Iceland in 2021. The drone pilot who captured the footage informed AFP it reveals the Fagradalsfjall volcano close to Iceland’s capital Reykjavik.
“The Klyuchevskoy volcano in Russia is beginning to erupt,” reads a Malay-language TikTok submit shared on July 31, 2025.
The accompanying video of lava effervescent up and overflowing from a crater has been considered greater than 33,000 occasions.
Screenshot of the false TikTok submit captured on July 31, 2025, with a pink X added by AFP
The identical video was shared alongside an analogous declare on TikTok and Fb after Russia’s Geophysical Survey mentioned the Klyuchevskoy volcano — the best energetic in Europe and Asia — erupted on July 30, with lava seen flowing down its slopes (archived hyperlink).
Earlier that day, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Russia’s far japanese Kamchatka area, triggering tsunami alerts throughout components of the Pacific coast (archived hyperlink).
The circulating video, nonetheless, reveals an eruption at a distinct volcano 4 years earlier.
A reverse picture search on Google utilizing keyframes from the falsely shared clip led to comparable footage posted on Fb in November 2024, the place it was captioned, “Boiling infernal lava pond within the crater pit of an Icelandic volcano” (archived hyperlink).
The submit embeds an earlier submit from June 2021, and credit the video to a Bjorn Steinbekk.
Screenshot comparability of the falsely shared clip (left) and the sooner Fb posts (proper)
A subsequent key phrase search for “Bjorn Steinbekk” on Google led to the Instagram account of an Icelandic photographer with the identical title who specialises in taking drone movies and pictures of volcanoes (archived hyperlink).
The identical video was additionally shared on the Instagram account on Could 22, 2021 (archived hyperlink).
Screenshot of the falsely shared clip (left) and the video posted by Bjorn Steinbekk on Instagram (proper)
Steinbekk informed AFP he filmed the video used within the false posts on the Fagradalsfjall volcano close to Iceland’s capital Reykjavik, in 2021 (archived hyperlink).
“That is certainly my video. This isn’t the primary or tenth time this occurs,” Steinbekk mentioned in a July 31 e mail.
The Fagradalsfjall volcano erupted in March 2021 after mendacity dormant for 800 years, NASA’s Earth Observatory mentioned on the time (archived hyperlink).
AFP reported that the volcanic eruption, which drew lots of of hundreds of vacationers and was the longest in 50 years, was formally declared over by authorities on December 20, 2021 (archived hyperlink).
AFP has additionally debunked different misinformation that has swirled on-line because the 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Russia’s Far East.
