Social media users are claiming a photo from Joe Biden's surprise trip to Kyiv shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky holding his US counterpart's hand to keep him nearby. This is false; the image has been digitally manipulated to re-position the leaders' hands, the New York Times photographer who took the picture confirmed to AFP.
The war in Ukraine has been accompanied by a ferocious battle of disinformation, waged in particular by pro-Russian agitators seeking to distort and shift the blame for many atrocities on the ground. They have sought to depict the Ukrainian side as Nazis or suggest that Western support for Kyiv is evaporating. Here are some of the main narratives, false or misleading, that have been fact-checked over the past year by AFP's digital verification teams.
President Biden did say some U.S. aid to Ukraine could go to social support, like helping with pensions. The viral video clip is from 2022.
Ukrainian refugees are portrayed in some media and social media channels as ungrateful, dangerous and parasitic. DW explains why such propagandist tactics often work - and how to recognize them for what they are.
Chinese social media users have repeatedly shared a doctored clip of Russian President Vladimir Putin giving a speech with false subtitles that claim he said he will not step down from power until "the problem in Ukraine is settled". However, the video contains clips taken from two different addresses and audio from one of the speeches. The Chinese and English language subtitles are false translations of the speech. As of February 17, 2023, AFP has found no official reports about Putin making such an announcement.
President Joe Biden announced on Jan. 25 that the U.S. would provide Ukraine with 31 tanks. After the announcement, a meme on social media misquoted Biden’s remarks from March 2022, suggesting he said that sending tanks to Ukraine would cause World War III. Biden said sending weapons “with American pilots and American crews” would cause a world war.
In the battle for influence running parallel to Russia's war on Ukraine, the Kremlin has consistently taken aim at NATO. DW asked experts how the propaganda machine works.
Unverified. The figures quoted in Twitter come from a Turkish website that does not link to its sources, nor does it provide any other authenticated evidence.
The claim that it received its data from Israeli security services is also highly dubious.
While we cannot verify the actual number of soldiers killed on either side of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, the estimates quoted in the tweet and the article do not match anywhere near the figures cited by Western intelligence services and senior officials.
Social media users have been circulating a video of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, claiming that the footage shows him calling on NATO to launch preventive nuclear strikes against Russia. It turns out, however, that this footage isn't new - Zelensky made these statements back in October 2022. Moreover, the translation of his statement, originally in Ukrainian, leaves out some nuance.
Bill Gates did not say that in the coming years Ukraine will be the greatest danger for the world. In an interview with the German newspaper Handelsblatt, the well-known philanthropist stressed that war is a "terrible tragedy" for the country where hostilities are taking place, but the echoes of this war also reverberate throughout the world. In particular, African countries are now receiving less attention because European budgets are being reallocated to other needs brought on by the pandemic, the war, and the energy crisis.