In recent weeks, people have been sharing at least three videos purporting to show Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky either using cocaine or making incoherent remarks after allegedly consuming drugs. But these videos have been cut misleadingly and sometimes even digitally manipulated.
The commemorative coins honoring Volodymyr Zelenskyy were created for sale by a private company called the White House Gift Shop, not the U.S. government.
Social media users are falsely claiming that the Biden White House created special coins honoring Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Despite what the posts suggest, the commemorative coins were created by a private company, not President Joe Biden's White House.
The nonprofit White House Historical Association ' which runs two retail shops located near the White House in Washington, including one at the White House Visitor Center ' confirmed to PolitiFact that its stores are not selling the commemorative Zelenskyy coins. There is no mention of the coins on the White House's official government website, either.
We rate this Facebook post False.
A video spreading across social media of Zelensky with cocaine on his desk is, of course, fake, the latest in a smear campaign against him.
Social media posts shared multiple times claim a bar in Jerusalem called "Putin Pub" was renamed "Zelenskiy Pub" -- using an alternative spelling of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky's surname -- following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late-February 2022. However, the image shared alongside the posts was doctored to add the Ukrainian president's surname in place of where the Russian president's surname had been. One of the bar's operators told AFP on March 9 they had taken down the sign that said "Putin". On March 10, the bar was renamed "Generation Pub".
Verdict: False
The cover is digitally fabricated. A Time Magazine spokesperson confirmed the outlet did not publish such a cover.
[Note: This article is dated April 2022. Zelensky was featured on the 26 Dec., 2022 cover of Time Magazine, as its 'Person of the Year']
As a number of other fact-checking organisations have made clear, there is no evidence that Soros and Zelenskyy are cousins or that a spokesperson from the DOD confirmed this.
We could also find no evidence of any statement mentioning the two men in the DOD's press releases or on its social media accounts.
Conspiracy theories aimed at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have been circulating on social media since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. One recent example, falsely attributed to a “Pentagon official,” is the unfounded claim that Zelensky is the cousin of billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and billionaire philanthropist George Soros are not cousins. The claim is "entirely false," said a spokesperson for Soros' Open Society Foundations.
A viral Facebook post falsely says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and billionaire philanthropist George Soros are related by birth ' one in a series of baseless claims about links between the two.
Soros has been at the center of many debunked claims about his connections to Ukraine, including that he wanted to run the country and that he was using the Ukraine "as a playing field to undermine (former President Donald) Trump's campaign," NBC News reported in 2019.
More recently, false claims have said that Soros admitted on television that he helped overthrow the former Ukrainian president in order to help Zelenskyy take office.
The NBC News story noted that Soros "has long been the target of conspiracy theorists about Jews controlling the world." Soros and Zelenskyy are both Jewish.
We rate the claim that Zelenskyy is a cousin of Soros Pants on Fire!
On April 2, international journalists and Ukrainian military units entered Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv. The previous evening, videos showing the bodies of civilians lying on Yablonska Street had begun surfacing on Telegram, shocking people around the world. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky referred to the Russian military’s actions as genocide; U.S. President Joe Biden called them war crimes. Meanwhile, the Russian government has given a number of contradictory explanations of what happened, none of which have acknowledged Russia’s own responsibility. Meduza has collected and analyzed all of the available information about the atrocities in Bucha. Here’s what we know for sure.
An image of a woman apparently bursting onto a TV set has been shared hundreds of times in posts claiming she crashed a Ukrainian news broadcast to urge President Volodymyr Zelensky to "surrender". However, the picture was taken from a video made by a TikTok creator using a green screen. The original news broadcast shows no interruption from a protester.