Ukrainian refugees are accused by Russian social media users of mowing a huge swastika into a field in Brandenburg, Germany. These accusations are unfounded. According to German media, the Nazi symbol, which has been banned in Germany since the end of WWII, could have been made by a local villager.
Verdict: False
This photo is miscaptioned. It was taken in 2005 and shows a prisoner from Belarus, not a soldier from Ukraine.
The myth of Nazi-ruled Ukraine has been actively used by the pro-Kremlin outlets for years to denigrate Ukraine.
In 2015 Ukraine issued a ban on Nazi and Communist ideologies. The far-right groups had a limited presence during the Euromaidan protests and have suffered defeats in every national election since, with a united front of all radical right-wing parties in the 2019 parliamentary elections winning only 2.15% of the vote falling far short of the 5% minimum guaranteeing entry into parliament.
There is absolutely no evidence that substantiates information disseminated online that Ukraine sold high precision weapons to Islamists under the guise of "surplus". Lists of military equipment that Ukraine sells abroad are published in the public domain. There are no Javelins on the list.
An image shared in multiple social media posts in different countries purports to show a genuine tweet from CNN about child soldiers in Ukraine. The claim is false; AFP found no evidence that the tweet was ever published by CNN, and the US broadcaster said it was fabricated. The photo in the posts has circulated online since at least 2018 in reports about Ukrainian children learning battlefield skills at a summer camp, and the photographer told AFP it was "never used" by CNN.
Photos of high-ranking Nazi officials are circulating on social media along with the allegation they show the grandfathers of leading politicians such as German chancellor Olaf Scholz. Here is why these claims are false.
An image of Russians forming the number 55 to celebrate the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin rocketing into space has been mischaracterized to wrongly claim that it shows Ukrainian students celebrating Hitler's birthday.
Anyone confusing this shape for a swastika is mistaken. While the the numbers are made with straight lines like a swastika ' lacking the curve that's often used to write the number five ' the angles are off. The two ends of both fives point in the same direction, whereas each end of a swastika points in a different direction.
But what's more, this photo wasn't taken in Lviv in 2022. It was shot in Penza, Russia, in 2016, to celebrate the 55th anniversary of Cosmonautics Day.
The "55" can be seen at the 47 mark, and it's followed by an image of Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet pilot who became the first person to orbit the earth on April 12, 1961.
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As Russian strikes pounded the besieged port city of Mariupol in Ukraine, Facebook posts shared in various languages claimed US General Roger L. Cloutier was captured by Russian forces there. However, NATO said the rumour was "completely false" and that Cloutier, who leads NATO's Allied Land Command, had not been to Ukraine since July 2021. Cloutier was in Turkey when the false claims about his whereabouts circulated online.
None of this is true. The video is a work of fiction and the people in it are actors. The video is related to war in Chechnya, but only because it's a clip from The Search (2014), a war drama written and directed by French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius. The Search is fiction, though set in a real war. But it's worth pointing out that right at the beginning it specifically identifies the men who kill the man and woman as Russian soldiers.
And the caption's claim that "Ukrainian Nazis once upon a time invaded Chechnya" is incorrect.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia’s talk of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine is a non-starter in peace negotiations. We’ll explain what these claims are all about and why experts say they are misleading.