Latest fact checks & sources

An audio recording is being circulated online as “evidence” of Ukrainian “sabotage”, however the recording first surfaced online at least in 2018 when it was widely circulated in Kazakhstan.

Purported images of Polish state television have circulated on Twitter showing a national map of Poland’s borders, but overpowering much of Ukraine’s territory. The channel itself and the country’s secretary of state have slammed this as the “Russian propaganda machine” trying to destroy Ukraine’s positive relationship with Warsaw. We take a closer look in this edition of Truth or Fake, with Vedika Bahl.

Russian media and Telegram accounts have been sharing an edited anti-Ukraine poster, allegedly located in the middle of a Parisian metro station. Pro-Russian channels claims the poster shows French people telling Ukrainian refugees that they’ve overstayed their welcome. We debunk these claims in this edition of Truth or Fake.

Russian media claims that humanitarian agencies killed civilians and looted in Soledar are based on one “interview” with an alleged Soledar resident, an interview which is not supported by any other evidence. The Donetsk Region police have not documented any criminal actions against residents involving international or Ukrainian volunteers.

The Polish television channel TVP, whose logo was used on a Russian fake showing a map of Poland that includes neighboring Ukrainian territories, denied they had ever used such a map during any of their programming. The screenshot used by Russian media was taken from a TVP weather forecast, a map was photoshopped with a new map and a presenter from another Polish television channel.

Two viral videos claim to show the Jan. 18 helicopter crash that killed Ukraine’s interior minister and about a dozen others. These videos weren’t from the crash.

As the war in Ukraine raged on in early 2023, rumors about the country’s president rage with it. From claims about his career, to rumors about illicit drug use, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a magnet for doctored images, misinformation, and more. Continue below for a collection of stories about the Ukraine president’s history before and after the war began.

A study by the US think tank CSIS states that the United States may face shortages of certain types of weapons and ammunition. However, this will not be a problem for the American Armed Forces. The United States possesses more than enough interchangeable types of weapons.

StopFake checked the photo using Google and Bing image searches, and found that the photo used to create this latest fake is of a tattoo studio in Russia. The original photo shows a tattoo parlor called “Tattooirograf,” which is located in Biysk, in the Altai Republic of southern Russia. In addition to this low-quality photoshop, Russian media also made a mistake with their special offer, writing the word “акция” (“discount offer”) in Russian instead of “акція”, as it would be spelled in Ukrainian.

Is Ukraine sending children to fight on the front lines of the war? That’s what some people on social media are claiming. As proof, they cite a video showing three very young-looking soldiers, which has been circulating online since November 8. It turns out, however, that we could identify two of the three people pictured in the footage and they are young adults – 23 and 25 years old. Furthermore, our team spoke to the NGO Amnesty International, which said that it had no knowledge of documented cases of child soldiers in the Ukrainian Army.

The latest pro-Russian narrative in the war in Ukraine is that the Ukrainian army is sending children and teenagers to the frontline. To illustrate this claim, users are posting a video on Twitter that shows three young soldiers, claiming they are children. Our team were able to identify two of the three soldiers in the video. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.

Verdict: Misleading Ukraine did not kill 12 generals in a single day, though they claimed the deaths of several Russian officers in December 2022.

Social media users have noted that the same blonde woman has appeared behind Russian President Vladimir Putin on three different occasions – proof, they say, that he used “paid extras” during his address marking the start of 2023. However, it turns out that these images do feature different women. One is a soldier who was given a prize by Putin on December 31, 2022 while the two other images show a regional deputy (local politician) from Novgorod, and a supporter of the Russian president. This politician has been previously accused of being an extra.

Internet sleuths are setting social media alight with claims that the Russian president used “paid extras” in his New Year’s Eve address, after they found previous official photographs featuring a blonde woman with a striking resemblance to one pictured during the speech. These claims have made media headlines across the globe. We take a closer look in this edition of Truth or Fake with Vedika Bahl.

Verdict: False The image is digitally fabricated. There is no evidence that Charlie Hebdo published this cover.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year kept our fact-checkers very busy. We wrote 92 articles debunking false claims about information related to the war. These ranged from claims the Bucha massacre was staged to false TV reports and accusations of Nazism among Ukrainians. To mark the end of the year, we made a list of some of our top fact-checks about Ukraine.

On the heels of Volodymyr Zelensky’s December 21, 2022 trip to Washington, social media users are claiming an image shows US President Joe Biden placing his hand on the Ukrainian leader’s buttocks. But the picture has been digitally manipulated; the original photo and other shots from the visit show Biden’s hand on Zelensky’s back, and a White House spokesperson confirmed the version circulating online is “doctored.”

False. While Dmitry Peskov possesses a number of expensive watches by designer Richard Mille, including one estimated to be worth more than $600,000, the watch in the photo shared on social media is not worth $6 million. Reports by Russian independent media claimed the watch in the photo was worth 6 million rubles, which appears to have been misinterpreted or mistranslated into a dollar value.

False. No, Biden did not place his hand on Zelensky’s buttocks. The viral image is a digitally manipulated version of an official photo shared by the White House press team.

A video that shows a military tank hurtling down the street has been viewed thousands of times in social media posts that claim it was filmed in Ukraine in January 2022, after Western leaders sounded the alarm over a potential Russian invasion. The posts are misleading; the footage was filmed in May 2014, when deadly clashes erupted between Ukrainian troops and separatists in the city of Mariupol.