It's well known that foreign fighters have joined Ukrainian military units. However, claims are being made by Russian officials and media outlets of serving Nato troops on the ground in Ukraine. [...]
Russian media outlets haven't provided evidence of serving Nato personnel on the ground, only pointing to the presence of individual foreign fighters on the battlefield.
Global media outlets widely shared a video they attributed to Russian state energy company Gazprom in articles published on September 6, 2022. The video, which was circulated online by pro-Russian users, showed the company halting its flow of natural gas to Europe. However, our journalists investigated the origins of the video and discovered that it likely wasn't made by Gazprom.
In a video posted on Russian Telegram accounts, a man claims to have found a geography book for Ukrainian high school students in which the map of Ukraine has been cut in half, missing the areas occupied by Russian troops. But several clues in the video indicate that it is a fake, as confirmed to us by the book's publisher.
A strange video is spreading on Telegram and Twitter: Hospice residents in Germany are allegedly getting tattoos of Putin to take him to his death as "living voodoo dolls." The whole thing is a fake.
A claim that NATO has sent fighter jets to Ukraine to help the country fight invading Russian forces was shared by multiple social media posts in August 2022. The claim, however, is false. While there was a proposal in March to supply Ukraine with Soviet-era jets through a US air base, Washington rejected the idea over fears it could escalate the conflict. Separately, NATO's press office told AFP that the claim was "not accurate".
Determining whether a scene actually took place where a social media user said it did - also known as geolocation - has become a major part of verifying social media posts. In this article, we take a look at some essential geolocation tools and walk you through a few case studies from the FRANCE 24 Observers team.
The website looks authentic, but it isn't. Fake news sites showing well-known media brand names are acting as vehicles for Russian propaganda, among other things.
This photo has nothing to do with the Ukrainian national movement and with the events of the 1943 Volyn tragedy. The children in the photo were killed by their own mother Marianna Dolinska on the night of December 11-12, 1923, in the village of Antoniowka near the Polish city Radom.
There are about 200 million people who use Twitter on a daily basis, making it an important site for news and information. But this social network is also a prime source of disinformation, from fake accounts to tweets taken out of context. The FRANCE 24 Observers team takes a look at some good habits to avoid falling into these Twitter traps.
A photo of several people wearing military uniforms with Chinese and Russian flags has been shared hundreds of times in social media posts that claim it shows Chinese soldiers joining the Russian army to fight in Ukraine. This is false. AFP traced the photo to the website of a military-themed amusement park in Russia. The photographer who took pictures of the event said the people in the photo were "tourists".