A residential tower in Kyiv that was hit by a missile soon after Russia launched its war against Ukraine has become a subject of misinformation. Social media users claim pictures, showing the building seemingly intact, prove the war that began more than a year ago is not real. But AFP found authentic evidence of extensive damage to the building, and the restoration that followed.
StopFake located the video being circulated in Russian media claiming to show children being sent to the front. The video turned out to be of an adult Ukrainian National guard serviceman.
In his opinion piece for the British conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper, retired British Colonel Richard Kemp does not write that
Ukraine "cannot seize Crimea." On the contrary, Kemp emphasizes that
"Russia's complete collapse is surprisingly close," Ukraine will be able to
return the Crimean Peninsula which was annexed in 2014 and "achieve the
complete collapse of Putin's forces" with the full support of its partners.
Russian news sites and Russian social media accounts are disseminating
fakes claiming that the bodies of more than 500 Ukrainian soldiers were
found in a mine shaft at the Bogdanka coal mine in Poland. Bogdanka's press
office told StopFake such claims are completely fake, and there are no
bodies anywhere on the coal mine's territory. StopFake factcheckers have
ascertained that these fake claims were originally published on an
anonymous Telegram channel, which according to Ukraine's Security Service,
is used by Russian secret services to foment and incite anti-government
sentiments in Ukraine.
A "document" purporting to be an order for the mobilization of Ukraine's
nuclear plant workers is being disseminated online. The document is a fake
as evidenced by the many errors in the text of the letter. Furthermore,
some of the "signers" of this "document" are no longer members of Ukraine's
parliament. Mobilization preparation and management is not the
responsibility of Ukraine's legislative body.
Since the end of 2022, the FRANCE 24 Observers team has seen several similar examples of fake anti-Ukraine advertisements, reportedly on billboards in the United States and Poland. But when we took a closer look, we found some clues that convinced us these ads were fake and that the videos were edited.
In a video circulated by Russian media claiming it shows Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky's double, the Ukrainian President is followed
by his personal bodyguard, Maxim Donets, who has headed the Ukrainian
Presidential Security Service since 2-019.
Fake Russian social media posts use 2018 photo of Turkish tank destroyed in
Syria.
According to Ukraine's Air Force, the air raid alert that sounded during
the US President Joe Biden's visit to Kyiv was due to the take-off of in
Belarus of MiG-31K aircraft carrying Russian Kinzhal missiles. The maximum
range of such missiles is more than 2,000 kilometers, which is why air
raids sirens are sounded throughout the country every time Russian planes
carrying those missiles take off.
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.