Latest fact checks & sources

The assertion that collecting signatures is easier and more democratic in Russia than in France, thereby enabling smaller candidates to compete, is contradicted by reality. Twelve candidates participated in the 2022 French elections. In contrast, only one independent candidate competed in the 2024 Russian elections: Vladimir Putin.

On 5 and 6 August 2023 Saudi Arabia hosted multinational peace talks attended by 40 countries (including China) in Jeddah focusing on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s proposed peace plan. More recently, on 1 December 2023, a tenth working meeting with representatives of 83 states and three international organizations on the implementation of the Ukraine’s Peace Formula was held in Kyiv, Ukraine. Ukraine’s peace formula was also discussed in Davos at the WEF in January 2024. In February 2024, Switzerland announced it would organise a high-level Ukraine peace conference by the summer, the date of which has not yet been announced.

Despite Kremlin outlets claiming otherwise, the West is not fighting a proxy war in Ukraine. Russia is the only country responsible for the invasion of Ukraine. The RT article refers to a joint guest article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by two German politicians, Anton Hofreiter (The Greens) and Norbert Röttgen (CDU/CSU), who argue in favour of transferring Taurus missiles to Ukraine.

The fact that the EU, along with the US and other international partners, provides Kyiv with financial and military assistance does not mean that Europe opposes a peaceful settlement in Ukraine. What increases the number of casualties is Moscow’s continuation of its unprovoked and unjustified aggression.

The claim about NATO expansion misrepresents the process of NATO enlargement. NATO does not expand, but considers the applications of candidate countries that want to join exercising their free will to decide alliance affiliation. NATO enlargement is not directed against Russia.

Recurring Pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives aimed to demonstrate that Ukraine’s biggest supporters have malicious intent towards Ukraine, and only provide assistance in order to exploit it. There has been no credible information or official announcements to support such claim or the UK’s intentions to seek territorial gains in Ukraine.

Pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative framing the exposition of Russian atrocities as false. The 2024 Oscar wining documentary film ’20 days in Mariupol’ was shot in the city of that name during the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February-March 2022, and everything that it shows was filmed first-hand by Ukrainian video journalist Mstyslav Chernov and his team, who barely managed to escape from the city. Many of the war crimes documented by Chernov have been confirmed by other sources.

There is no evidence backing the allegation, which has been denied by the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service and refuted by fact-checking organisations. The image used to illustrate this Telegram post, supposedly taken from Ukraine’s 24 Kanal website, is a forgery as this outlet never published any story under this headline.

There are no Nazis in the Ukrainian government. Accusations of Nazism are one of the most common pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives aimed at undermining the statehood of Ukraine. The narrative of alleged Nazism in Ukraine has been actively used in Russian disinformation since the 2014 Euromaidan protests to discredit Kyiv’s shift toward Euro-Atlantic policy.

The White House called Russian allegations “categorically false and nothing more than propaganda.” Russia has for several years refused to formally invite OSCE election observers to monitor elections within its territory. The most recent instance when the OSCE observed elections in Russia was in 2018.

The US, the EU and NATO condemn in the strongest possible terms Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is entirely unjustified and unprovoked. Not only Western but also many other nations around the world support Ukraine with military and financial aid for the country’s efficient self-defence, in accordance with the UN Charter article 51, to stop Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented a 10-point peace plan at a EU-Ukraine summit in February 2023. The EU unequivocally supported Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s peace formula. It is up to Ukraine to decide when it will hold talks with Russia.

Russia does not target only military targets in Ukraine. War crimes against civilian individuals and infrastructures have been extensively documented. Since December 2022, the Kremlin even recognized massive missile and drone strikes against civilian infrastructures: “yes, we are doing it”.

Analysts and researchers have pointed out that anti-Western conspiracy theories about all-powerful secret elites have been used as a political tool used by the Kremlin to strengthen the domestic stability of the current regime and expand its influence abroad by emphasising Russia’s moral superiority.

Ukraine is a well-defined nation-state with a long history and its own literature and identity, despite foreign rule for long periods of time. Ukrainians and Russians belong to the same ethnolinguistic group – the Slavs – but that alone does not preclude Ukraine’s distinctness as nation.

€53 billion of the €138 billion (38.4%) were provided to Ukraine in the last three months, since December 2023, when the amount of EU support totaled €85 billion. This demonstrates that European support to Ukraine has been on an upward trajectory contrary to claims made by pro-Kremlin outlets.

In December 2022 an investigation based on videos and telephone metadata of civilian devices stolen by Russian soldiers established the responsibility of a Russian regiment – and its commander – for the death of several dozens of civilians from Bucha. With regards to the narrative about Boris Johnson, this distorts an interview with Davit Arakhamia, the Chairman of the parliamentary faction of the ruling party of Ukraine. In the interview, Arakhamia himself denied the fact that the Ukrainian delegation was ready to sign the document and that Boris Johnson allegedly stopped them.

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine was unprovoked and unjustified. Contrary to Russian claims, Ukraine had not planned to attack Russia, and did not commit genocide in the non-government-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Ukraine was striving to implement the Minsk Agreements, but the Moscow-backed military formations there were constantly disrupting their implementation.

The claims that Polish foreign and security policy is based on territorial revanchism and that the Polish elites are trying to revive the “Polish Empire” are groundless. Poland adheres to international law regarding state borders, fully supports the independence and territorial integrity of neighbouring countries, and it rejects any “imperial” ambitions towards other countries.

The disinformation is based on an official statement from the Defence Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, published on March 7, the anniversary of the creation of the International Legion of Ukrainian Military Intelligence. The statement notes that “The Legion united volunteers from more than 50 countries of the world, who, after a full-scale invasion, came to the aid of Ukrainians and began to fight the troops of terrorist Russia,” the report says.