Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, images purporting to show Ukrainian acts of resistance have been shared widely on social networks. The Ukrainian population is indeed carrying out a strong resistance in several cities, but some of these posts are actually images taken out of context and have nothing to do with the ongoing conflict.
The video-sharing app TikTok has become a tool in the hybrid war in Ukraine, but fake news and scams connected to the conflict also abound on the platform. We take a closer look in this edition of Truth or Fake.
WHEN Russia invaded Ukraine last week, several disinformations were in circulation which prompted the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to swing into action.
As the civilian death toll mounted in Ukraine following Russia's invasion, a video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times in social media posts that claim it shows a Ukrainian reporter inadvertently exposing fake war casualties in a live broadcast. This is false: the video shows a climate change protest in Austria that was staged weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.
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.
Footage of armored vehicles set alight by Molotov cocktails on a Ukrainian street is being presented on social media as local resistance against Russia's ongoing invasion. This is false; the recording is from Ukraine, but it was shot in 2014 in Kyiv during the country's popular protest movement, when demonstrators torched the army's vehicles.
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.
Russian state media says the missile can destroy an area the size of Texas or France, not the world. We could not find more objective reports detailing the same destructive power.
"Individual warheads would strike distinct targets within a very limited ballistic 'footprint,' or many warheads from the same missile would strike the same target, increasing the likelihood of destroying that target completely," according to a 2021 report from EurAsian Times.
The weapon is believed to be able to evade missile defense systems and its deployment is expected around 2022, said a March 1 Congressional Research Service report.
We rate the claim that a Russian nuclear weapon dubbed Satan 2 is "capable of destroying everything breathing in the world" False.
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.
False and misleading information about the Russian invasion of Ukraine has spread rapidly on social media since Russian forces launched a military assault in the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 24.
Here’s a roundup of claims related to the Ukraine-Russia conflict analyzed by the USA TODAY Fact Check team.