Latest fact checks & sources

There is no such law draft on the Ukrainian parliament’s website, nor is there any information about this initiative. The screenshot of the Ukrinform website is fake, as the informational agency did not publish this news either.

Did Ukrainians really set a Russian Orthodox church on fire? A video purporting to show just that has been circulating online since April 5, 2023. However, it turns out that this video was filmed in Russia more than ten years ago and shows an accidental fire.

The Russian Embassy in Kenya shared an image on Twitter on April 6 showing an exhausted-looking Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who has been incarcerated in the United Kingdom since 2019. However, it turns out that one of his supporters generated the image using artificial intelligence.

A video circulating online shows the filming of the short feature film ‘Hope’. The behind-the-scenes videos were taken from the TikTok account of the director Artem Kocharyan, who currently lives in Latvia. The film is based on the real story of his Ukraine acquaintance – a pregnant girl who lost her family due to the Russian aggression.

This information is fake. The White House did not permit Ukraine to strike Russian territory. On the contrary, the White House’s National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby stated that the US does not ‘enable or encourage’ the Ukrainian Forces to strike outside Ukraine and will only assist the Ukrainian Forces in liberating their territories. Moreover, there are no new Russian territories, only the Ukrainian territories illegally occupied and annexed by Russia.

Russian media are circulating a video purporting to show the torching of an Orthodox Church belonging to the Moscow Patriarchate in the Mykolaiv region by Ukrainian “radicals”. The video was actually taken in Russia ten years ago, in 2013.

Miscaptioned. Context: The video being shared was posted on YouTube around 10 years ago and is reportedly of a church being burned in Russia.

[T]he poster is not legitimate. Not only is it riddled with suspicious errors, the Embassy of Ukraine in the USA has denied authorship of, or support for, the poster. For these reasons, we rate the claim as “False.”

After the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant last month for Russian President Vladimir Putin, a video re-emerged on social media claiming to show him arriving in South Africa for an official visit. But this is false: the video was filmed in July 2018 ahead of the 10th summit of the BRICS group, which South Africa hosted. AFP Fact Check previously debunked a similar claim about the video a few months after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Although there was a fire at the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, it was restricted to one small section on the third floor of the building. The fire was said to have spread around 60 square meters. According to news reports it was put out shortly after it was reported.

Russia is taking its turn in a rotating leadership position within the U.N. That doesn’t mean Putin is now president of the organization.

The claim: Zelenskyy has a Florida home, $1.2 billion in overseas account, 15 homes, 3 planes and $11 million in monthly income. Our rating: False

Did graffiti depicting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a black hole “sucking up European money” really appear on the streets of a Paris suburb? What about graffiti showing the president as an insect or as excrement? According to images circulating online, graffiti like this has been popping up on the streets of several European cities. But in fact, none of them ever existed. We took a closer look to prove that they are fake.

A video shared by everyone from prominent Russian media to official Kremlin social media accounts purports to show Ukrainian soldiers harassing a woman and her child. But open source communities’ debunking of the video has prompted an unusual backtrack from some of the pro-Russian lobby. We take a closer look in this edition of Truth or Fake.

Soldiers fighting… missiles destroying tanks… war scenes in full splendor. Footage from video games is so realistic that it is often used to portray real-life war scenes.

Using artificial intelligence to make videos of people doing and saying whatever you want them to is the essence of a “deepfake”.

“Victims” of Russia’s war in Ukraine who mysteriously move while being filmed? That’s according to a recent post on TikTok. It’s not true, but how do you prove it?

Apps like DALL-E and Midjourney are making it easier and easier to create realistic-looking images using artificial intelligence. In this video, Derek Thomson shares four tips on how to detect them, but warns that the technology is improving fast.

For France’s Press and Media in Schools Week 2023, France 24’s Observers team, specialised in debunking misinformation, has produced a new annual edition of “Truth or Fake”, a short programme giving tips on how to disentangle fact from fiction.

Russian media are disseminating a video claiming it shows a Ukrainian soldier shooting at a car with a woman and child inside because the woman was speaking Russian. This poorly staged video was shot in Russian occupied Ukraine near Donetsk. The alleged Russian speaking woman and child are never seen, the location of the alleged incident is a spot where Ukrainian military simply could not be present, all and the cross painted on the back of the alleged Ukrainian military vehicle – a symbol that has never been used by the Ukrainian military, all point to the the video being yet another Russian fake.