Israeli TV Aired A 'Star Wars' Clip With Russia-Ukraine Footage & It Was So Out Of Place

How do you mix that up?

​A video of a TIE Fighter at the side of a snowy highway. Right: Photo of a Stormtrooper.
Global Editorial Fellow

A video of a TIE Fighter at the side of a snowy highway. Right: Photo of a Stormtrooper.

What's a TIE fighter from Star Wars doing in the middle of Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

Israel's Channel 13 News is catching some heat online for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it mistake in one of its Russia-Ukraine reports on Monday.

According to videos shared from a current affairs show on the network, the station played a brief Star Wars promotional video alongside a bunch of footage from Ukraine.

It was short, but it clearly showed a crashed spaceship and a couple of Stormtroopers standing beside it on a country road.

How does that happen? We have absolutely no idea, but people were quick to mock it online.

The original clip was apparently produced for a German TV network in 2014, and it's not an actual scene from one of the movies.

It shows a car driving down a snowy German highway, with a TIE fighter crashed on the opposite lane. The ship and the Stormtroopers are computer-generated images super-imposed on top of the video.

The video has since been taken down, but you can still find it floating around on other YouTube pages online.

Israel's Channel 13 News has not publicly acknowledged the error, according to the Israel Hayrom newspaper. Channel 13 also hasn't explained how it happened, although Israel's Walla news outlet says it may have been planted in a stream of Telegram footage from Ukraine's front lines.

The internet has been full of fake videos about the Ukraine invasion lately, and some of the biggest hoaxes have spread faster than the truth.

Videos like the fake "Ghost Of Kyiv" fighter pilot are hard to spot for what they are, but we're pretty sure this Star Wars clip won't be fooling anyone.

Well, except for whoever put it on TV in the first place.

This article's right-hand cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.

Andrew Mrozowski
Global Editorial Fellow
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