Our rating: Manipulated media
The video is a fabrication that wasn't reported or published by E! News, a company spokesperson said. The video is consistent with material created by a Russia-aligned influence campaign, disinformation experts said.
On February 2, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said he had only received $75 billion of the $175 billion the United States had spent on Ukraine. The cry went up, what happened to the other $100 billion? Was it lost or stolen? The answer is no. Only part of the aid goes through Ukrainian control. A large part pays for activities as a result of the war but not to Ukraine directly. These include the United States training of Ukrainian forces, global humanitarian assistance, additional costs of U.S. surge forces in Europe, and intelligence support for both NATO and Ukraine.
As CSIS has reported before, "aid to Ukraine" is a misnomer because 90 percent of military aid is spent in the United States. Of aid overall, 60 percent is spent in the United States, about 25 percent is spent in Ukraine, and the final 15 percent is spent globally.
WHAT WAS CLAIMED: E! News published a video stating celebrities received funds from USAID to visit Ukraine.
OUR VERDICT: False. The video is fake and there's no evidence USAID funded the visits.
The E!News portal never published such a story, and the widely circulated news is fake, debunked by both the media and the celebrities who visited Ukraine.
Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr and other prominent conservatives are sharing a video that claims to show E! News reporting that the US's humanitarian agency paid millions of dollars to celebrities including Angelina Jolie and Ben Stiller to visit Ukraine and help boost President Volodymyr Zelensky's popularity amid the country's war with Russia. But the clip is not an authentic report, a spokesperson for the entertainment news channel told AFP, and Stiller has publicly rejected the allegations as false.
Much of the money the U.S. has dedicated for Ukraine aid is spent in the U.S. on domestic weapons manufacturers and U.S. military and government operations.
Direct military support to Ukraine totaled about $70 billion out of the $175 billion Congress has appropriated.
The money isn't being laundered, it's being spent as Congress intended.
A video in a recent Facebook post cobbles together quotes from an Oct. 19 address by President Joe Biden as evidence that the commander in chief has confirmed World War III is underway.
President Joe Biden urged aid for Israel and Ukraine in a recent primetime address; he didn't declare World War III.
We rate claims Biden confirmed World War III on live TV - or anywhere - False.
Unverified reports about Russian President Vladimir Putin's health have been circulating online, driven by social media.
The Kremlin denied Russian President Vladimir Putin was ill. Photos released by Russian media show Putin at meetings and public events in the days after this supposed health emergency.
The claim started on Telegram, a platform known for facilitating the spread of misinformation about Russia. The account that made the claim has shared other dubious reports about Putin's health in the past.
Based on available information, we rate the claim that Putin recently suffered a heart attack False.
The Ukrainian Forces Commander-in-Chief General Valery Zaluzhny, did not say anything of the sort. This video is a high-quality fake, a so-called deepfake, created using artificial intelligence.
Halloween was not celebrated in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine temples. In the original video, the choir performs the church song How Beautiful is Your Temple, Mother of God, and not the song dedicated to evil spirits holiday. In addition, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church publicly condemns any celebration of Halloween.