A viral post on Facebook claims to show a convoy of NATO military advisers being destroyed by Russian missiles. While many users believe that the images represent actual fighting, they were actually taken from a war video game series called Arma 3. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.
True. The video of Putin saying Russian troops would "stand behind the people," and dare Ukrainian troops to "shoot their own people" is genuine. The statement was made during his 2014 press conference.
While it is unclear if he implied using them as human shields, he did specify "not in front of them, but behind," further supporting that interpretation.
Pro-Russian social media accounts have been widely circulating a video over the past few weeks that shows a man dressed as a Ukrainian soldier acting out a scene in front of a camera. These accounts have claimed this video is proof that people are staging scenes of the war in Ukraine. Turns out, however, the video was filmed during the shooting of a music video by a Ukrainian artist whose music represents the "pain of war".
This photo was altered. In the original, Zelenskyy is holding a jersey that has the number 95, not a swastika.
The original image was distributed by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service in June 2021. According to a caption on Agence France-Presse's website, it shows him "posing with a jersey of Ukraine's national football team."
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has pushed the idea that the effort is one of "denazification," a narrative historians have decried as "false and destructive."
We rate claims Zelenskyy was holding a jersey with a swastika False.
Ukraine has claimed that Russia has lost 66,280 troops since the start of the war, although other estimates puts the figure at much lower.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, repeated false claims have appeared on social media alleging that the entire conflict is being staged. FRANCE 24's fact-checking team debunk the latest example: two videos that show a man in Ukrainian army uniform being filmed, as he appears to act out a scene on the battlefield.
We've seen plenty of outlandish claims about the war between Russia and Ukraine on social media. But one claiming actor Sean Penn was involved in faking the entire conflict may take the cake - and is certainly also false.
After the rockets comes the propaganda - pro-Russian voices have claimed that wounded people in Kyiv were just actors staging their suffering. But a DW fact check shows that the victims are real.
Pro-Russian accounts claim that Ukrainian "propaganda" and mainstream Western media are showing fake victims, following a Russian missile strike in Kyiv on October 10. AP and Reuters reporters on the scene were able to confirm that the civilians in the viral posts are real victims of the war in Ukraine. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.
Germans have not been chopping down trees in Tiergarten, Berlin, to meet energy needs. The claim is a misquote from a Bloomberg article about firewood demand.
While the article mentions that residents in the German capital did resort to felling parts of the park after the Second World War, the article clearly states that no such thing has happened today following Russia's shutdown of gas supplies to Europe.
The misquote, however, has been widely shared by pro-Russian accounts to support their narrative about the energy crisis in Europe.