Latest fact checks & sources

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The photo in the tweet is not of an organ harvesting site in Kharkiv, but an exhumation in Lyman, Ukraine, from October 2022. The photo depicts the uncovering of a mass grave in Lyman about a week after Ukrainian troops reclaimed the formerly Russian-occupied city. It has nothing to do with the material the tweet describes.

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.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul: “It’s imperative the American people know about the existing accountability mechanisms [on US assistance to Ukraine], including third-party monitors such as Deloitte, and the robust oversight being conducted by Congress, and in particular, this committee.”

A video appearing to show an explosion has circulated widely in social media posts that misleadingly claim it captured the moment the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine was destroyed in June 2023. The footage was in fact taken in 2022 when another explosion occurred at the dam during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A video has gone viral on social media, with users claiming it shows proof that the destruction of a historic cathedral in Odesa on the night of July 22 to 23 was staged by Ukrainian authorities. They argue that a woman in the video picks up the debris with too much ease for it to be real. However, the woman is actually picking up a light material, most likely polystyrene, so this does not prove that the attack was staged.

No evidence was provided to support the claim Johnson blocked a peace agreement, and the claim that Russia withdrew its forces from Kyiv due to an agreement with Zelensky is widely disputed by political and military experts. Newsweek has put each of the claims it investigated to RFK Jr.’s spokespeople via email. There has been no response as of the time of publication. Unless RFK Jr. can provide substantive proof to support some of his arguments, the claims the Democratic hopeful made on Fox News simply do not match the facts.

Russia seeks to gain influence in Africa in several ways, from disinformation campaigns to sending Wagner Group mercenaries. Why is Africa so important to Vladimir Putin?

European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell did not ask Russia to lower the price of grain for the sake of “fair competition”. In public speeches, the diplomat has said Russia is causing a global food crisis and that Moscow’s actions would lead to a global rise in prices.

While footage and claims from Wagner should be treated cautiously, it stands to reason that had the video depicted a mass surrender, then Prigozhin or his representatives would have heralded that fact and not a prisoner exchange. In short, based on footage from the Wagner Group and other news sources, Newsweek can confirm the aerial footage is not of a Ukrainian mass surrender.

The OSCE did not confirm the facts of illegal transplantologists operating in Ukraine in 2014 and generally lacks evidence regarding possible organ removal in eastern Ukraine. On October 30, 2014, the organization issued an official refutation. It states that during one of the sessions of the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meetings (HDIM), two Russian non-governmental organizations quoted reports of possible organ removal and sale of human organs in eastern Ukraine. In response to this, a representative of the Ukrainian government stated that these accusations would be investigated as soon as greater access to the region becomes possible. This situation was described by the OSCE Special Representative on Human Trafficking Issues, Madina Jarbussynova, for Ukrainian media. Later, her words were taken out of context in Russian media.

A video has been circulating online that allegedly shows “Lord of the Rings” actor Elijah Wood giving the Ukrainian president advice on how to tackle his alleged drug and alcohol addictions. He can be seen recording himself and talking to a so-called “Vladimir”. However, the video has been heavily edited and his agent has confirmed it was not published by the actor.

Numerous reports from international human rights organizations prove that since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has regularly deployed cluster bombs against Ukrainian civilians and Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. One such cluster munitions attack was the April 8, 2022, Russian missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station, which killed at least 58 civilians and injured some 100 people.