Another Twitter fake has been debunked.
Putin's speech prompted misleading rumours that some Russians had joined lengthy queues at Finland’s southeastern border on Wednesday night, hoping to leave the country. Euronews has fact-checked the claims.
A number of images and videos were shared online, showing long lines of stationary traffic at Finland's border.
Some users falsely claimed that the queues and traffic jams were as long as
35 kilometres and were “rising by the hour”.
One such video of the Vaalimaa border post in southeastern Finland gathered more than 2.5 million views on Twitter.
However, an online investigation reveals the footage was first shared online on 19 September, two days before Putin's mobilisation call.
The owner of the video, who posted the clip on both YouTube and TikTok, also states that it was filmed “two weeks earlier” at the end of August and that the congestion was "normal" for autumn border crossings.
His claims have also been supported by the Finnish Border Guard Service.
"There is normal queuing in border traffic," said Matti Pitkäniitty, the head of the International Affairs Unit at the Finnish Border Guard.
"The situation at [the] Finnish-Russian land border remains
normal," he wrote on Twitter.
The regional border service added that queues on Wednesday at the border inspection were
only "250 metres" long, and certainly
not 35 kilometres.
"[The] situation at Finland's borders has not changed with the announcement of Russian mobilisation," the Border Guard service added on Twitter.
"There are videos circulating on social media, at least some of which have already been filmed before and now taken out of context. There is incorrect information in circulation."
The false rumours of kilometre-long queues were also debunked online by Ville Cantell, a director at Finland's Ministry for Foreign Affairs.