Latest fact checks & sources

As of January 2023, Ukraine’s population ranged from 28 to 34 million people, according to Ukraine’s Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies. Temporarily occupied territories are not included in the calculations. The United Nations Population Fund meanwhile cited a figure of 36.7 million people, taking into account the temporarily occupied territories.

A call for homeless Americans to join the Ukrainian front? That”s what these advertisements shared on Twitter since April 2023 claim to show. Publications in several languages claim that a poster in the New York subway is offering financial benefits to those who are down on their luck – by fighting in Ukraine. However, there are several visual inconsistencies in the poster that point to it being fake. Plus, Ukrainian authorities have denied the existence of any such campaign.

On the sidelines of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s European tour, online claims went viral that the Ukrainian president has purchased luxury villas in Crimea, Italy and England with Western military aid money. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.

Because the video predates Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and because it was filmed in Afghanistan, we rate the version claiming that it shows a build-up of NATO forces in Ukraine “Miscaptioned.”

An old video of a Russian tank toppling over at a military parade has been viewed tens of thousands of times in posts that misleadingly claim the driver who overturned the vehicle subsequently avoided being sent to the front line in the war against Ukraine. The clip — which recirculated shortly after a military parade in Moscow in May 2023 — corresponds with media reports from 2018 about an accident at another event in the western Russian city of Kursk.

A video has surfaced in social media posts that falsely claim it shows protesters rallying against Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May 2023. While Russians have genuinely protested against Putin’s war in Ukraine, the footage shows an anti-Kremlin protest in May 2013.

The video circulating online is satirical and its author is not and has never been a ‘Ukrainian refugee in Europe.’ The woman from the video permanently lives in Ukraine and films many satirical sketches on TikTok. However, Russian propaganda used the 48-second joke video to once again discredit Ukrainian refugees.

Verdict: False The screenshot appears to be digitally fabricated, as the headline neither appears on the outlet’s website nor its social media accounts. A reverse image search reveals the photos were created using artificial intelligence (AI).

A photo of a burning building is being shared on Twitter alongside claims it shows a fire at a factory supplying aircraft engines to Russia’s military amid its war in Ukraine. This is false; the image first appeared in 2018 and shows an oil refinery that caught fire, according to reports from the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Moscow and news articles from the time.

The Russian media spread the video with grammatical errors in the accompanying text, which appears to have been written by a person who does not speak Ukrainian. In addition, propaganda announced matches that do not correspond to the official Premier League schedule. In a comment to StopFake, the Ukrainian Football Association also denied the information spread by Russian media.

Former Commander of US Forces in Europe, Ben Hodges, said nothing about the “future failure” of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. On the contrary, the general expressed cautious optimism regarding the effectiveness of the Ukrainian army in operations against Russian occupiers.

Ukrainian forces shot down three Russian unmanned vehicles originally identified as “Supercum” drones.

The stylized Ukrainian coat of arms on President Zelenskyi’s sweatshirt is one of many other variations of the Ukrainian trident, which has been used in state heraldry for centuries.

The New York Times article does not claim that Ukraine opposes peace and negotiations. On the contrary, it emphasizes that the main topic of the meeting between President Zelenskyi and the Pope was precisely the Peace Formula – the Ukrainian scenario for the end of the war. At the same time, Zelenskyi really considers the negotiations with Putin meaningless.

Claim: A pair of photographs shows the same location in Bucha, Ukraine, following Russia’s withdrawal in April 2022 and roughly a year after efforts to rebuild were undertaken. Rating: True

In response to StopFake’s request, the Ukrainian Embassy in Estonia claimed that Ukrainians are not being drafted into the Estonian army. The official website for refugees in Estonia has no information about this obligation for Ukrainian citizens as well.

The Ukrainian Intelligence Chief of the Defense Ministry did not call to kill all Russians. In his interviews, Kyrylo Budanov emphasized that anyone who committed war crimes in Ukraine will be found and liquidated in any part of the world. He never called for killing Russians on national grounds, as the Russian media reported. Such narratives are another Russian propagandist attempt to present Ukraine as a country of flourishing Nazism.

Greece pledged military assistance to Ukraine in resisting Russian aggression. The country’s defense minister has stated that Greece ‘will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes.’

A video compilation that has been circulating since May 3 claims to show that – despite the war – the party is in full swing in Kyiv’s nightclubs, taking advantage of foreign donations to Ukraine’s war effort. Most of these images date from before the war, however, and some of the establishments where they were filmed have been closed since the conflict began in February 2022.

While there is some truth to the tweet about the tank, it doesn’t tell the full story. The T-34 was developed in 1939-1940 in Kharkiv, then part of the Moscow-controlled Soviet Republic of Ukraine at Plant Number 183. Production was later moved to the Russian cities of Omsk, Nizhny Tagil, and Nizhny Novgorod due to (later confirmed) fears of German invasion. […] According to Zaloga, the turret on the tank in the Victory Day parade indicated that it was likelier built in Nizhny Tagil, where a redesign called the T-34-85 was built.