A volcano in Russia’s Far East erupted for hours and magnitude 8.8 earthquake hit the Kanchitka area, but it was actually a section of the Vastka area shot in Iceland in 2021.
“The Klechevskoy volcano in Russia began to erupt,” wrote the Malay Tiktok Post in the Malay Tiktok Post shared on July 31, 2025.
The accompanying video of lava bubbled and overflowing from the crater has been viewed over 33,000 times.
Screenshot of False Tiktok post was captured on July 31, 2025, AFP added red X
The Geophysical Survey in Russia said that the Klechevskoy Volcano (the highest active in Europe and Asia) erupted on July 30, and the Klyuchevskoy Volcano on July 30, with the Geophysical Survey in Russia saying the same video was shared with similar claims by Tiktok and Facebook.
Earlier in the day, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Kanchitka region in Russia’s Far East, triggering a tsunami warning in parts of the Pacific coast (a link to archive).
However, the circulating video shows an eruption in another volcano four years ago.
Reverse image searches on Google using a fake shared clip’s keyframe led to similar material posted on Facebook in November 2024, with the title “Boiling Hell Lava Pool on the Volcano Platform of Iceland’s Volcanoes” (link to archive).
The post embeds earlier posts starting in June 2021 and attributes the video to Bjorn Steinbekk.
Comparison of screenshots of fake shared clips (left) and older Facebook posts (right)
The subsequent search for keyword “Bjorn Steinbekk” on Google resulted in Icelandic photographers’ Instagram account with the same name, specializing in drone videos and volcanic images (archive links).
May 22, 2021 (Archive Link) The same video was also shared on your Instagram account.
Screenshots of fake shared clips (left) and videos posted by Bjorn Steinbekk on Instagram (right)
Steinbekk told AFP that he took a video in 2021 (a link to archive) in a fake post on the Fagradalsfjall volcano near the Icelandic capital Reykjavik.
“This is indeed my video. It’s not the first time or the tenth time it’s happened,” Steinbekk said in an email on July 31.
NASA’s Earth Observatory said the Fagradalsfjall volcano erupted in March 2021 after 800 years of dormant.
AFP reported that the eruption attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists and was the longest in 50 years, and was officially announced by authorities on December 20, 2021 (a link to archive).
Since the 8.8-magnitude earthquake in the Russian Far East, AFP has also debunked other misinformation.
