We've seen plenty of outlandish claims about the war between Russia and Ukraine on social media. But one claiming actor Sean Penn was involved in faking the entire conflict may take the cake - and is certainly also false.
After the rockets comes the propaganda - pro-Russian voices have claimed that wounded people in Kyiv were just actors staging their suffering. But a DW fact check shows that the victims are real.
Germans have not been chopping down trees in Tiergarten, Berlin, to meet energy needs. The claim is a misquote from a Bloomberg article about firewood demand.
While the article mentions that residents in the German capital did resort to felling parts of the park after the Second World War, the article clearly states that no such thing has happened today following Russia's shutdown of gas supplies to Europe.
The misquote, however, has been widely shared by pro-Russian accounts to support their narrative about the energy crisis in Europe.
A screenshot of a Gettr post critical of U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine has been attributed to Kid Rock, but it originated on a fan account.
We couldn't find a Gettr account for Kid Rock, and it's not listed among the social media accounts on his website. Kid Rock's website links to his YouTube account and his verified Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts.
We've previously debunked claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy owns a $35 million home in Florida. We couldn't find any credible sources to corroborate the claim in this Gettr post, either.
As for the claim that Kid Rock authored it, we rate that False.
Pro-Russian accounts claim that Ukrainian "propaganda" and mainstream Western media are showing fake victims, following a Russian missile strike in Kyiv on October 10. AP and Reuters reporters on the scene were able to confirm that the civilians in the viral posts are real victims of the war in Ukraine. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.
Pro-Russian social media accounts have been circulating photos and a video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky standing in front of a green screen, claiming that this image offers proof that the videos that he publishes on social media are filmed in a studio and not on the ground as claimed. However, these pictures don"t prove anything of the sort - they were taken during a forum where the president appeared as a hologram.
A truck, a boat and an ID card - the search for clues after the Crimea bridge explosion is mired with fakes. One particularly clumsy deception comes from the Russian secret service, as our fact check shows.
No, a viral dashcam video doesn't show the Crimean Bridge explosion. The video was first posted months before the explosion took place and is a compilation of multiple videos.
Screenshots of a BBC news report shared on social media purport to show a journalist exaggerating the danger of a Russian attack on Irpin, Ukraine. This is misleading; the reporter has refuted the claim, and the posts ignore the shelling that took place in the area where the footage was filmed.
Did the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces publish a photo of himself wearing a bracelet with a swastika on it? That"s what some Russian media outlets and pro-Russian social media accounts have been reporting since October 9, 2022. While the photo is authentic, the compression of the image and the poor resolution quality make it possible to mistake the symbol on his bracelet for the Nazi cross. In reality, however, it is a Celtic knot.