False. The video of the anti-Zelensky billboard in Shibuya, Japan, is fake. It was edited from a popular clip that's been on YouTube for more than two years and viewed more than eight million times. There is no evidence that any such billboard has been displayed in Shibuya, one of the busiest and most popular neighborhoods in Tokyo, Japan.
Pro-Russian social media accounts have been widely sharing a video that they claim shows Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to the Russian army en masse. The video, however, actually shows a prisoner swap between the Russian state-funded paramilitary group, the Wagner Group, and the Ukrainian army in May 2023.
Russia's propaganda machine periodically disseminates fake French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo magazine covers, to buttress the disinformation narrative the Kremlin in currently pushing. Whatever Russian media and its acolytes claim, there is no Charlie Hebo cover dedicated to Ukrainian Fencer Olha Kharlan.
Claim: A video that went viral in July 2023 authentically depicted an ad in Japan that read "Stop Zelenskyy, Stop War."
Rating: Fake
Context: The video was posted in October 2020, before the Russian attack on Ukraine, and was digitally edited.
Pro-Kremlin media are actively spreading misinformation about the 37th US President Richard Nixon's alleged prediction of war in Ukraine. Referring to Nixon's declassified letter to the 42nd American President Bill Clinton, Russian media claim that Nixon predicted an "American" Revolution of Dignity and an "American" war in Ukraine.
Social media posts claim a video depicts Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to the Russian army. This is false; the clip shows a prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Wagner mercenaries in late May 2023 near the city of Bakhmut.
Dating at least to 2008 or 2009, increasingly hostile language laid the groundwork for rejecting Ukraine’s existence as a state, a national group, and a culture.
What follows is a compilation of publicly available statements (readers are invited to submit by email any that we may have missed).
Experts such as Francine Hirsch, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg,” have pointed to such language as evidence of genocidal intent toward the Ukrainian people. Whether and how the concept of “genocide” applies to Russia’s campaign against Ukraine is the subject of debate, notwithstanding the reference in Article II of the Genocide Convention to “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.”
Russian claims that Ukrainians would like a president like Vladimir Putin are false. After Russia's occupation and annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of hostilities in Donbas in 2014, Putin's standing among Ukrainians plummeted and reached a minimum after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
This is not true. The disinformation was spread because of an interview with the head of Lviv Regional Territorial Center for Drafting and Social Support. In it, he stated that about 20% of conscripts, who must be recruited according to the Centre's plan, come voluntarily. Total mobilization or forced drafting of 80% of men was never mentioned.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told CBS News' "Face the Nation" he does not believe concerns over a lack of accountability and oversight on U.S. military aid to Ukraine hold water.