Social media posts claim a video featuring a man in military uniform tearfully embracing a woman and a baby depicts a Ukrainian soldier heading to war. But the clip shows the 2018 homecoming of an American Marine who met his son for the first time.
China's government is amplifying debunked claims about non-existent U.S. biological weapons labs in Ukraine, bringing the falsehoods back into the spotlight on social media.
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A spokesperson for the Chinese government said the U.S. has biolabs in Ukraine.
The claim originated with the Russian government and has been previously debunked by U.S. government officials and weapons control advocates. Following Zhao's March 9 remarks, U.S. government officials strongly refuted the claims again, saying the false narrative was being used to lay the groundwork for further violence in Ukraine.
Social media posts claim US President Joe Biden's administration is leaving the country's southern border exposed by asking guards protecting it to deploy to Europe to assist Americans fleeing Ukraine. But US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) says the claim incorrectly conflates different branches of the agency, and that the personnel in question are not primarily tasked with guarding against illegal border crossings and smuggling.
Several megachurches in the U.S. are actively raising funds to support Ukrainians in light of the Russian invasion. But social media posts have falsely claimed that “we haven’t seen a single American mega church offer anything to the Ukrainians.”
A story that claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin bombed a villa in Ukraine owned by President Joe Biden is bogus. It was created by a misinformation website that regularly publishes made-up stories. We found no evidence that Biden has a villa in Ukraine.
Claims about nefarious biolabs in Ukraine ' some supposedly "U.S. owned" ' are also fabricated, and part of disinformation efforts by Russians.
It's unclear what the blog is talking about in its reference to "pedophile rings," but it claims that Putin is wiping out "child trafficking covens" in Ukraine, and we found no evidence that these exist.
Social media users are sharing an image of what appears to be US comic Sam Hyde in a fighter jet cockpit as proof that he is the mythical 'Ghost of Kyiv' responsible for shooting down numerous Russian jets amid the country's invasion of Ukraine. This is false: while the existence of the viral 'Ghost of Kyiv' is unsubstantiated, AFP Fact Check found that an image of a US pilot has been edited to add Hyde's face. This claim has nevertheless been taken seriously by some social media users who are not familiar with the US comic. It is part of a long-running hoax linking the comedian to tragic events worldwide.
Social media posts claim US broadcaster CNN misrepresented an image of a 2015 explosion as being from the 2022 war in Ukraine. But the image shows an explosion in Kyiv and was released by the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 24, 2022, and the channel said the alleged screenshot of a CNN report featured in the posts is fake.
A video has circulated in social media posts that claim it shows Russian President Vladimir Putin praising Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan after the two leaders met in Moscow on the day Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine. The clip was viewed hundreds of thousands of times in posts by Pakistan-based social media users. In fact, the video's English-language subtitles have been misleadingly altered. In the original clip, Putin was shown criticising Ukraine.
Social media posts claim US broadcaster ABC misrepresented a video of a 2018 gas explosion in Russia as footage from the war in Ukraine. This is false; the clip was shot in Ukraine by a Turkish news agency, and a similar video from AFP confirms that the incident took place following Russia's 2022 invasion of its eastern European neighbor.
Social media posts claim CNN lied to the public by tweeting that a man was the first US casualty in Ukraine after previously featuring the same photo in a post about his execution in Afghanistan. This is false; the network says the tweets are not from its official accounts, and the man pictured is a YouTube video game commentator who continues to livestream on the platform.