FAKE: Ukraine has lost its fleet, aircraft, air defense, and control over Kharkiv
Ukrainian Armed Forces are holding back the Russian aggressor's offensive.
Category Ukraine
Read MoreFAKE: Ukraine has lost its fleet, aircraft, air defense, and control over Kharkiv
Russia’s hybrid war in Ukraine – Truth or Fake
Disinformation is part and parcel of the approach to war as seen in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine crisis: A low-cost disinformation campaign aids Putin’s playbook
How then can the well-oiled Russian machine produce such "low-cost" disinformation? "Simply because, for the moment, the Russian authorities do not need to do better." [...]
What’s more, it’s not so much the quality as the quantity of disinformation that matters. "The goal is to create so many different – and sometimes even contradictory – versions of what is happening at the border that no one can really distinguish the true from the false anymore."
Russia’s false flag attack in Ukraine – Truth or Fake
A media specialised in putting the spotlight on Russian disinformation has highlighted a false flag attack in eastern Ukraine that pro-Russian media outlets were pinning on Kyiv. Corpses likely retrieved from a morgue were used to set the scene.
FAKE: The DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) militants repulsed attack by Ukrainian saboteurs near Horlivka – video
Reports of a sabotage near Horlivka are a provocation spread by the DPR and Russia.
Via verifying the video metadata, we found out that it had been taken beforehand.
A process of verifying on the Metadata2go resource showed that the video had been created on February 8, 2022. And the militants published it as an evidence of the sabotage on February 18. That is to say, that the provocation has been prepared earlier.
Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely claims Ukraine was ‘No. 1 donor’ to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign
Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign did not report receiving any donations from the Ukrainian government or Ukrainian nationals. Those donations would have been illegal.
A spokesperson for Marjorie Taylor Greene cited a 2015 Wall Street Journal graphic that has been frequently misrepresented online. The chart shows donations to the Clinton Foundation between 1999 and 2014 by the nationality of the individuals who made them; it does not say anything about donations to the foundation by foreign governments.
The Clinton Foundation said it has never received donations from Ukraine's government.
Our ruling
Greene said, "Ukraine was the No. 1 donor to Hillary Clinton when she was running for president."
Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign did not report any donations from Ukraine or Ukrainian nationals ' a move that would have broken the law. Asked for evidence to support Greene's claim, the congresswoman's spokesperson did not cite any campaign donations.
He pointed instead to a Wall Street Journal chart that mapped large individual donations between 1999 and 2014 to the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit organization. The chart was a ranking of the top foreign donors by nationality, not contributions from foreign governments.
The Clinton Foundation said it has never received any funding from the Ukrainian government.
We rate Greene's statement False.
J.D. Vance says transgender rights drives looming conflict in Ukraine
Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance said the State Department's focus on transgender rights is inflaming the conflict with Russia in Ukraine.
Russia has placed as many as 150,000 troops near Ukraine's borders.
Russia has said Ukraine's ties to NATO are a key threat to Russia's national security.
Our ruling
Vance said that Biden risks war with Russia because Putin doesn't "believe in transgender rights."
There is a risk of war, but it is because of Russia's focus on Ukraine's ties to the west and the buildup of Russian forces along Ukraine's border.
The State Department noted the threats against transgender people as one issue among many in a report on human rights. It gave much more space to the danger posed by Russia's military policies in its most recent annual threat assessment.
The risk of war in Ukraine is not affected by Putin's attitude toward transgender rights.
We rate this claim Pants on Fire.
Update: This story has been updated to include a response we received from the Vance campaign shortly after initial publication.
Crimea: Six Years after Illegal Annexation | FSI
March 18 marks the sixth anniversary of Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea. Attention now focuses on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Donbas, a conflict that has taken some 14,000 lives, but Moscow's seizure of Crimea - the biggest land-grab in Europe since World War II - has arguably done as much or more damage to Europe's post-Cold War security order.
Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says “No” | Brookings
It is abundantly evident that Russian President Vladimir Putin is no fan of NATO. Indeed, he displays a pronounced - almost obsessive - antipathy toward the Alliance. He claims that NATO took advantage of Russian weakness after the collapse of the Soviet Union to enlarge to its east, in violation of promises allegedly made to Moscow by Western leaders. But no such promises were made - a point now confirmed by someone who was definitely in a position to know: Mikhail Gorbachev, then president of the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Gorbachev: I am against all walls – Russia Beyond
As the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approached, Maxim Korshunov of RBTH sat down with Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and last president of the Soviet Union, to discuss the historic rapprochement between East and West and the prospects for a new Cold War.