Does a video posted on social media show Russian naval exercises off the coast of Florida in June 2024, as claimed in the post? No, that's not true: The missile launch test shown was performed from the White Sea in May 2018, not off the Florida coast in June 2024. The 2018 test was more than 5,000 miles from Florida.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on June 16, 2024. The caption for the video read:
Russia is conducting naval exercises using nuclear submarines just 100 km away. off the coast of Florida. This "reminder" comes As the United States floods a country bordering Russia with weapons and authorises their "use" against targets inside Russia
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Jun 17 5:27:20 2024 UTC)
As the watermark on the video post shows (archived here), it was taken from Voice of America's YouTube channel, posted on May 23, 2018, itself taken from the Russian Ministry of Defense (here, archived here) on the same date. The video post on X cropped out the part reading "SUBSCRIBE" at the bottom right and edited out the last few seconds of Voice of America's version, leaving out its signature animation at the end.
While the video does show the test-firing of four intercontinental ballistic missiles by a submerged nuclear submarine, it was performed from a position in the White Sea, more than 5,000 miles from Florida.
At the time this was written, USAToday and Newsweek had reviewed the same claim.
