Open source evidence exists that appears to run counter to claims of elaborate fakes and staged productions, as well as calling into question the apparent timeline of events as depicted by Russia in recent days.
Journalists who were able to reach Bucha after the departure of the Russian troops witnessed streets lined with abandoned corpses, some of which showed signs of summary executions, such as hands tied behind their backs, and clearly visible bullet holes marking their bodies.
These pitiless reports led Ukrainian authorities and international analysts to accuse Russia of war crimes, but as soon as disturbing videos and pictures of the massacre started spreading online, Russian authorities denied the allegations, claiming that the pictures were a “provocation” and “a staged performance” organized by Ukrainian forces “for the Western media”. As already happened after the bombing of the pediatric hospital in Mariupol, Russia started a massive disinformation campaign in order to deny the massacre through the exploitation of conspiracy theories circulating online.
The images rebut Russia’s claim that the killing of civilians in Bucha, near Kyiv, took place after its soldiers had left town.
There is no doubt that Ukraine's peaceful civilian population was subjected to extreme violence and brutality by the Russian military. Numerous local residents' testimonies from Kyiv area towns that have been under Russian military occupation for a month confirm this. Some of them have already been documented by the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch.
[T]he post is the latest in a wave of misinformation around the conflict and actually shows computer-generated images made with video game ARMA 3
After Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine, a video was viewed millions of times in multiple Facebook posts that claimed it shows fighting between soldiers from the two countries. In fact, the video has circulated online since 2010. A visual analysis of the clip found it corresponds with a raid by American and Iraqi troops on a shrine in Iraq in 2004.
According to the French Ministry of the Interior, as of March 31, the number of non-Europeans among the more than 26,000 Ukrainian refugees who arrived in France is less than 5%.
Social media users have been circulating two photos showing a Ukrainian airplane that they say smacked into a street sign because it was flying low to avoid Russian radar. In reality, this incident happened during a training exercise back in August 2020 and has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine.
There have been reports of Johnson's attempts to make energy deals with countries in the Middle East, following the energy crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But we could find no evidence the prime minister had made similar overtures to Nigeria.
Britain was not in recession as of March 2022. While Johnson may have been courting Middle Eastern oil-producing countries, we could not tie this to Nigeria or conditions in southeast Nigeria.
Multiple posts on Facebook have claimed that a sharpshooting Canadian sniper known as Wali was killed by Russian special forces 20 minutes after he arrived on the frontline in Mariupol, Ukraine as a volunteer fighter. However, this is false; the man, a former Canadian Armed Forces sniper, dispelled the rumours of his death during a video call.