WHAT WAS CLAIMED: E! News published a video stating celebrities received funds from USAID to visit Ukraine.
OUR VERDICT: False. The video is fake and there's no evidence USAID funded the visits.
The E!News portal never published such a story, and the widely circulated news is fake, debunked by both the media and the celebrities who visited Ukraine.
Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr and other prominent conservatives are sharing a video that claims to show E! News reporting that the US's humanitarian agency paid millions of dollars to celebrities including Angelina Jolie and Ben Stiller to visit Ukraine and help boost President Volodymyr Zelensky's popularity amid the country's war with Russia. But the clip is not an authentic report, a spokesperson for the entertainment news channel told AFP, and Stiller has publicly rejected the allegations as false.
Much of the money the U.S. has dedicated for Ukraine aid is spent in the U.S. on domestic weapons manufacturers and U.S. military and government operations.
Direct military support to Ukraine totaled about $70 billion out of the $175 billion Congress has appropriated.
The money isn't being laundered, it's being spent as Congress intended.
The claim that the LA Fire Department (LAFD) was impacted in its ability to fight the recent wildfires due to its donations to Ukraine was also promoted by writer and entrepreneur John LeFevre (archived here), who linked donations to Ukraine to current resource shortages.
In March 2022, during the early stages of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, fire departments across California, including Los Angeles County, donated some surplus equipment sitting in storage, including hoses, nozzles, helmets, gloves, boots, and other personal protective gear, as well as medical supplies. The donation did not include any critical equipment or heavy machinery.
There is no suggestion that the previous donations to Ukraine have impacted this particular situation.
As Ukraine braces for colder months, a well-coordinated and adaptive humanitarian response will be fundamental to help save lives.
Here are 5 facts you need to know about the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine:
This video has never been shown on Ukrainian television. To create a fake video, its authors used the real story of the American news program CBS Mornings and replaced its audio track.
The New York Times article does indeed contain a prediction that Russia may outpace European countries and the United States in terms of economic growth this year. However, this forecast does not belong to the NYT economic columnist Patricia Cohen, as the Russian media claim, but to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. Also, Russian media cover only a part of the article - the part about the resilience of the Russian economy to Western sanctions. Instead, the main idea of the publication, which is to prove that the Russian economy is currently working to wage war in Ukraine, remains unaddressed by propagandists. Russian publications also ignore the problems in the consumer sector that Russians are currently facing.
Advertising campaign calling for "stand with Ukraine," which was allegedly initiated by the Ukrainian government, is fake. The corporation that installed the billboard shown in the video denied the existence of such an advertisement.
Francis Fukuyama did not make such statements in an interview with Radio Svoboda. This conclusion was made by the Russian media. In reality, the American philosopher noted that the only way for Russia to leave the occupied territories is Ukraine's victory. He also said that "the issue that Ukraine will face in the future is the possibility that not 100 percent can be liberated". Yet he specified that all discussions about territorial concessions during future negotiations are speculative, and only the Ukrainians themselves should answer these questions and make decisions.