Since Thursday, February 16, numerous posts online have featured screenshots of a Danish television report showing a Ukrainian soldier with a patch on his uniform that some are saying means he belongs to the Islamic State organisation. However, there is no clear proof of what this patch represents. The Ukrainian soldier in question has given his own version of events.
The war in Ukraine has been accompanied by a ferocious battle of disinformation, waged in particular by pro-Russian agitators seeking to distort and shift the blame for many atrocities on the ground. They have sought to depict the Ukrainian side as Nazis or suggest that Western support for Kyiv is evaporating. Here are some of the main narratives, false or misleading, that have been fact-checked over the past year by AFP's digital verification teams.
Adrenochrome features heavily in QAnon conspiracy theories, which purport the baseless idea that a global cabal of pedophiles is harvesting the chemical from the blood of children to stay young and healthy.
That's false, and so is the claim that Putin foiled a shipment of it.
We found no credible news reports or other sources to corroborate the claims in this post.
Real Raw News has a disclaimer saying it contains "humor, parody and satire," though the author has defended his stories as truth. The website also regularly publishes false, fantastical stories authored by someone using a pseudonym.
We rate this baseless post Pants on Fire!
This story was fabricated. It appeared on Real Raw News, a site that regularly publishes false, fantastical stories authored by someone using a pseudonym.
Real Raw News stories are authored by someone using a pseudonym and the site has a disclaimer saying it contains "humor, parody and satire," though the author has defended his stories as truth.
We found no credible news reports or other sources to corroborate the claims in this post.
QAnon promotes a number of conspiracy theories that invoke pedophilia and a Democratic cabal. QAnon adherents were present during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These ideas also infiltrated political discourse as recently as the 2022 midterm elections.
We rate this claim Pants on Fire!
As the war in Ukraine raged on in early 2023, rumors about the country's president rage with it. From claims about his career, to rumors about illicit drug use, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a magnet for doctored images, misinformation, and more.
Continue below for a collection of stories about the Ukraine president's history before and after the war began.
StopFake checked the photo using Google and Bing image searches, and found that the photo used to create this latest fake is of a tattoo studio in Russia. The original photo shows a tattoo parlor called "Tattooirograf," which is located in Biysk, in the Altai Republic of southern Russia. In addition to this low-quality photoshop, Russian media also made a mistake with their special offer, writing the word "акция" ("discount offer") in Russian instead of "акція", as it would be spelled in Ukrainian.
Verdict: False
The image is digitally fabricated. There is no evidence that Charlie Hebdo published this cover.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine this year kept our fact-checkers very busy. We wrote 92 articles debunking false claims about information related to the war. These ranged from claims the Bucha massacre was staged to false TV reports and accusations of Nazism among Ukrainians. To mark the end of the year, we made a list of some of our top fact-checks about Ukraine.
The town of Lielvārde in Latvia has attracted attention from social media users after images and video of its Christmas tree - decorated with swastikas - were posted online. Internet users were quick to condemn the move as "fascist" and "pro-Nazi" - but is all as it seems? We take a closer look in this edition of Truth or Fake with Vedika Bahl.
The Al Jazeera news network has denied broadcasting a video claiming Ukrainian fans were arrested in Qatar for adding Nazi graffiti to a picture of the World Cup 2022 mascot. The channel added that its logos had been used without its permission. No such arrest has been announced by the Qatari authorities and Ukraine did not even qualify for this year's football tournament. Additionally, many of the images visible in the clip - which repeats the Russian narrative that Ukraine is under the sway of Nazi ideology - are taken from events unrelated to the global competition.