Rothschild & Co. has an office in Moscow and has been operating in Russia since the mid-1990s. Yet posts on social media falsely claim that Russia has barred the Rothschild banking family from doing business in the country. The claim is an adaptation of an old conspiracy theory about the family.
Nearly two weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the flow of false or misleading information about the war hasn't let up and now there are some outlandish theories being shared online.
Some have begun to circulate claims the war is a hoax, a media fabrication, or has been exaggerated by the West in terms of its scale.
We've examined some of them.
Social media posts claim that three NATO countries will give 70 warplanes to Ukraine to aid the fight against invading Russian forces. This is misleading; while Kyiv said Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia would provide the aircraft, officials from all three countries denied that they would do so.
A photo of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is circulating in Facebook posts that claim it shows him sharing a meal with soldiers resisting Russia's invasion. The posts are misleading; the photo was taken when Zelensky visited eastern Ukraine on February 17, 2022, days before Russia launched a military operation in the country.
The viral photograph shows Anastasiia Lenna, the 2015 Miss Grand Ukraine winner, posing with an airsoft gun. She confirmed that she did not join the Ukrainian military and said she posted the staged image to inspire people.
Our ruling
A Facebook post claims it shows a Ukrainian beauty queen fighting against the Russians invading Ukraine.
That's not the case. Lenna did not join the Ukrainian military. She posted a photo in which she's posing with an airsoft gun. She said the photo was meant to inspire people.
We rate this post False.
Verdict: False
The image dates back to at least 2016. There is no evidence it was taken in Ukraine.
During a 2013 speech, Vladimir Putin mentioned Satan and pedophilia, but he didn't say that the West is controlled by Satanic pedophiles.
As Russian troops invaded Ukraine, a video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times in social media posts that claimed it showed a huge explosion at a power plant in the separatist Luhansk region. While there have been reports of a fire at a power plant in the region, the video has been shared in a false context. It actually shows a deadly blast that ripped through the Chinese port city of Tianjin in 2015.
Facebook posts are circulating in Africa claiming to feature an image of Ukrainians kneeling and praying in the snow days before Russian troops invaded their country on February 24, 2022. In reality, the picture dates back to 2019 and shows residents of Kharkiv who had been praying every day in the city square since March 2014 when Russian separatists attacked Ukraine.
Two images of huge explosions among residential buildings have been shared hundreds of times on social media alongside a claim that they show Russia's attack on Ukraine. But the claim is false: the photos show Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip in 2018 and 2021.
