Claim: Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska spent $1,100,000 on Cartier jewelry and got a salesperson fired in the process during a visit to the U.S. with her husband, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in September 2023.
Rating: False
A fabricated video edited in the social media style of American media outlet USA Today claims a member of the Ukrainian delegation provoked a drunken bar fight in New York during President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to the US, before being detained by police. However, in this edition of Truth or Fake, Vedika Bahl uses geolocation tools to verify that the "brawl" images were filmed around 18 kilometres away from the alleged site. Both USA Today and the New York police dismissed the reports as fake.
Social media posts claim photos show Oleksiy Reznikov partying on a yacht in the South of France days after leaving his post as defense minister of Ukraine. This is false; the image was taken near Istanbul, Turkey, in February 2020, years prior to the war with Russia.
[Trump] overstated and understated the respective amounts of financial assistance that the U.S. and European nations have allocated to help Ukraine in the war with Russia.
Trump called out Europe, which he said has not provided nearly as much financial support as the U.S. to Ukraine amid its war with Russia.
"I think that Europe has to do more," Trump said, when Welker asked if the security of the U.S. "is linked to Ukraine's security." He continued: "We're in for $200 billion. They're in for $25 billion. And it affects them more than it affects us."
Those figures are not accurate.
A photo of former Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov is circulating online. Users claim it shows him yachting in Europe with his wife - just days after his dismissal over corruption scandals. Also, a video of a riot inside the Ukrainian parliament is falsely posted as recent. We tell you where these images really come from in this edition of Truth or Fake.
Social media users in Kenya have shared a video with the claim it is the trailer for an upcoming Hulu documentary, apparently cancelled because of pressure from the US government. But the trailer is fake.
Timothy Snyder writes: Whatever his new biography says, by giving into Russia’s nuclear blackmail the X boss can only encourage more threats from Putin.
There was no reasoning provided for the claims shared online beyond the distance between Estonia's border and Pskov.
However, the Estonian government has firmly denied the claims. A statement sent to Newsweek from a spokesman for the Government Office of the Republic of Estonia said: "This is false information."
Old image of the former Ukraine Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov on a yacht shared as recent
The U.S. did not accidentally send Ukraine $6 billion in military aid, as some online have alleged. This claim misinterprets a Pentagon announcement in June that the agency had overestimated the value of weapons it sent to Ukraine.