Russian planes bombed a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9, killing three people and injuring at least 17, including two pregnant women seen in photos shared around the world. Social media posts falsely claimed one woman “posed” as the two women. One of the women died of her injuries, along with her baby; the other gave birth to a daughter.
Tens of thousands of people have watched a video posted on Facebook that allegedly shows Ukrainians kneeling as a convoy carries religious relics through the streets of Kyiv to a bunker. However, this video is actually from several years ago and shows a funeral procession for fallen soldiers in another part of Ukraine.
The VERIFY team confirmed a video of Ukraine President Zelenskyy telling his people to surrender is a deepfake. It was created using images from press conferences.
Multiple megachurches around the United States have been raising funds to help Ukrainians during Russia's invasion.
Gateway Church, another megachurch in Texas, has set up a crisis relief fund to support people in Ukraine and the surrounding region.
Saddleback Church, a megachurch located in Lake Forest, California, has an advance relief team connecting with local pastors in Ukraine and Poland who are caring for hundreds of Ukrainian refugees. The church's website features ways people can help and has provided multiple updates on its efforts in the region.
The Rock Church, a megachurch in San Diego, California, is directing people to its partner organization, Crisis Response International, and told PolitiFact that it's in the process of establishing a Ukraine relief fund.
Crossroads Church, an Ohio-based megachurch, partners with humanitarian and disaster relief organizations Convoy of Hope and World Vision, which both have operations on the ground in Ukraine.
Other church networks, like the United Methodist Committee on Relief and Catholic Relief Services, are collecting donations and deploying staff and resources.
We rate posts that say no megachurches are raising money for Ukraine relief False.
Social media posts shared in 2022 picture Ukrainian former professional boxer Wladimir Klitschko alongside text saying the athlete auctioned his Olympic gold medal to raise money for children in his home country. But the move is not related to the ongoing war with Russia; Klitschko sold his award in 2012, a decade before President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine.
A video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in Facebook posts that claim it shows Russian President Vladimir Putin trying to embarrass a "Japanese delegation" by bringing his dog to an official meeting. The posts -- which circulated online after Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- refer to Japan's alignment with the United States and other countries, which have imposed sanctions on Moscow. But the video has been shared in a false context. It shows Putin bringing his dog to an interview with Japanese journalists at the Kremlin in 2016.
A photo of an elderly man clutching a cat has been shared in social media posts around the world that claim he was seeking shelter from Russian shelling in Ukraine. While millions of people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, the photo actually shows a man with his cat at the scene of a fire in Turkey in 2018.
Verdict: False
The woman pictured next to Zelenskyy is not the woman who died weeks earlier. There is no evidence the woman pictured in the post accompanying Zelenskyy has died.
Picture showing cars with smashed windows are circulating in multiple social media posts that claim they are vehicles in Ukraine targeted after the Russian invasion for displaying stickers of the Chinese flag. In fact, the pictures were digitally altered to add the flag and were taken years before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
A video has been viewed tens of thousands of times after it was shared in social media posts with a claim that it shows "a Ukrainian soldier killing Muslim Chechens during Ukraine's attack on Chechnya". However, the claim is false. The clip was actually taken from the opening scene of a French feature film called "The Search", which shows the execution of a Chechen family by Russian soldiers. The 2014 movie was set against the backdrop of the Russian-Chechen war in 1999. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was Russia - not Ukraine - that fought wars in Chechnya.