Multiple posts on Facebook have claimed that a sharpshooting Canadian sniper known as Wali was killed by Russian special forces 20 minutes after he arrived on the frontline in Mariupol, Ukraine as a volunteer fighter. However, this is false; the man, a former Canadian Armed Forces sniper, dispelled the rumours of his death during a video call.
There is no evidence Putin beheaded 12 bioweapon engineers in Ukraine.
This claim comes from Real Raw News, a blog that has shown a pattern of fabricating news about politicians being executed or arrested by the military.
Though the story claims Putin told former President Donald Trump about the alleged beheading, a spokesperson for Trump said the account is baseless.
A number of viral posts on social media have claimed that a Canadian sniper, dubbed "the world's deadliest sniper", was killed within hours of arriving in Mariupol, Ukraine, where he had gone to fight. However the man, nicknamed Wali, is still alive and well. He told the FRANCE 24 Observers team that he thinks the disinformation around his death serves to dissuade foreign fighters from going to Ukraine.
A TikTok video of a man smoking a cigarette in what appears to be a truck full of body bags has been viewed thousands of times in Facebook posts suggesting that deaths are being staged in the war in Ukraine. The claim is false; the clip shows the behind-the-scenes making of a music video for a song released by Russian rapper Husky in September 2020.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene parroted a Russian talking point with her claim that Ukraine is a country whose “government only exists because the Obama State Department helped to overthrow the previous regime.”
FactCheck.org presents the history of this Russian propaganda talking point, and explains why it is false.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered a barrage of false claims on social media, including posts that purport to show a video of “crisis actors” portraying dead victims of the fighting. The video used in the posts is from a climate protest held in Vienna, Austria, weeks before the war in Ukraine began.
Several videos and photos are circulating online, lending credibility to Russian claims of a serious neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine. The problem here though is that the images and videos are a distortion of reality and, in some cases, completely fictional. We take a closer look in this edition of Truth or Fake.
Russia has leaned on claims that Ukraine has killed Russian speakers in the country and that Russians are the targets of genocide there, but there's no evidence to support that.
Ukraine appealed to the U.N.'s International Court of Justice in the Hague to rule on the Russian government's claims of genocide "in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts of Ukraine," calling them false. The court ruled 13-2 on March 16 that the Kremlin's justification for the war was unjustified and ordered Russia to stop its invasion. Judges from Russia and China were the two dissenting votes.
We rate this post False.
The aftermath of the attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, was captured on video and in photos showing that it was an actual attack.
A Pentagon spokesperson called OAN host Pearson Sharp's claims "ridiculous." Several independent experts who spoke to PolitiFact agreed that it was completely without merit. Russian officials have conceded the attack occurred.
Our ruling
Sharp said the attack on the Mariupol hospital had "the makings of yet another false flag operation" by the U.S.
There is no evidence that the attack was staged or a false flag carried out by the U.S. Its aftermath was documented by workers, witnesses and journalists on the ground.
We rate OAN's claim Pants on Fire!
The Russian military claimed to have used a hypersonic missile on March 18 to strike an underground warehouse in western Ukraine. Two videos have emerged on social networks claiming to show this attack, but, in fact, they have nothing to do with this event.