A photo of a tractor towing a military aircraft has been shared thousands of times in social media posts that claim it shows a Ukrainian farmer capturing a Russian jet. While there have been reports of Ukrainian farmers making off with Russian military hardware, the picture was taken at an exhibit in 2011 to mark the anniversary of the armed forces of Croatia.
A video has been viewed millions of times online alongside a claim it shows a young Ukrainian boy crying helplessly after fleeing to neighbouring Poland "alone". This is misleading. Reuters news agency, which filmed the footage, told AFP that the boy was seen walking behind his mother in the second half of the video. The Polish Border Guard separately clarified that the boy was "with his family" when he crossed into Poland.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene parroted a Russian talking point with her claim that Ukraine is a country whose “government only exists because the Obama State Department helped to overthrow the previous regime.”
FactCheck.org presents the history of this Russian propaganda talking point, and explains why it is false.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered a barrage of false claims on social media, including posts that purport to show a video of “crisis actors” portraying dead victims of the fighting. The video used in the posts is from a climate protest held in Vienna, Austria, weeks before the war in Ukraine began.
Several videos and photos are circulating online, lending credibility to Russian claims of a serious neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine. The problem here though is that the images and videos are a distortion of reality and, in some cases, completely fictional. We take a closer look in this edition of Truth or Fake.
Russia has leaned on claims that Ukraine has killed Russian speakers in the country and that Russians are the targets of genocide there, but there's no evidence to support that.
Ukraine appealed to the U.N.'s International Court of Justice in the Hague to rule on the Russian government's claims of genocide "in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts of Ukraine," calling them false. The court ruled 13-2 on March 16 that the Kremlin's justification for the war was unjustified and ordered Russia to stop its invasion. Judges from Russia and China were the two dissenting votes.
We rate this post False.
The aftermath of the attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, was captured on video and in photos showing that it was an actual attack.
A Pentagon spokesperson called OAN host Pearson Sharp's claims "ridiculous." Several independent experts who spoke to PolitiFact agreed that it was completely without merit. Russian officials have conceded the attack occurred.
Our ruling
Sharp said the attack on the Mariupol hospital had "the makings of yet another false flag operation" by the U.S.
There is no evidence that the attack was staged or a false flag carried out by the U.S. Its aftermath was documented by workers, witnesses and journalists on the ground.
We rate OAN's claim Pants on Fire!
A video of soldiers jumping out of a plane with parachutes has been shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook in South Africa alongside a claim that it shows US paratroopers joining the war in Ukraine. But this is false: the footage, which has been viewed millions of times, has been online since at least 2016 and features US soldiers performing parachute drills at the Pope Army Airfield in North Carolina.
Multiple social media posts purport to show a photo of a Ukrainian farmer stealing a Russian rocket. However, the image has been doctored. The original photo was taken by NASA in 2018 and shows a rocket towed by a train, not a tractor.
The Russian military claimed to have used a hypersonic missile on March 18 to strike an underground warehouse in western Ukraine. Two videos have emerged on social networks claiming to show this attack, but, in fact, they have nothing to do with this event.