Latest fact checks & sources

A recent Instagram post sharing a TikTok video issues a “wake up call,” purportedly pointing to several clips as evidence that scenes of war in Ukraine have been staged. Using reverse image searches and InVid, a site that helps identify the origins of video clips, we found the ones featured in the Instagram post, and neither is meant to show real footage of the war in Ukraine. Those claims were wrong, and so is this one. We rate the claim that these clips show fake war footage in Ukraine Pants on Fire.

As stated on its website the Russian Red Cross, an organization making up the international network of Red Cross societies, has been fundraising and providing support for Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine and their families. However, this does not mean that other Red Cross societies or its international organizing bodies have any part in its fundraising. The International Federation of Red Cross says it is guided by “impartiality”, among its guiding principles.

A viral post on Facebook claims to show a convoy of NATO military advisers being destroyed by Russian missiles. While many users believe that the images represent actual fighting, they were actually taken from a war video game series called Arma 3. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.

Uganda’s president came out as an early supporter of russia but this is not a real CNN headline. The post appears to be an altered screenshot of a 2014 story on CNN’s website. The story features a paused video of Museveni in which he appears wearing the same outfit and in front of the same background as the image of him in the Instagram post. We found no credible news reports or other sources documenting Museveni as saying it would be disgusting to support Ukraine. We rate that claim False.

We’ve seen plenty of outlandish claims about the war between Russia and Ukraine on social media. But one claiming actor Sean Penn was involved in faking the entire conflict may take the cake – and is certainly also false.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, repeated false claims have appeared on social media alleging that the entire conflict is being staged. FRANCE 24’s fact-checking team debunk the latest example: two videos that show a man in Ukrainian army uniform being filmed, as he appears to act out a scene on the battlefield.

Ukraine has claimed that Russia has lost 66,280 troops since the start of the war, although other estimates puts the figure at much lower.

This photo was altered. In the original, Zelenskyy is holding a jersey that has the number 95, not a swastika. The original image was distributed by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service in June 2021. According to a caption on Agence France-Presse’s website, it shows him “posing with a jersey of Ukraine’s national football team.” Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has pushed the idea that the effort is one of “denazification,” a narrative historians have decried as “false and destructive.” We rate claims Zelenskyy was holding a jersey with a swastika False.

Pro-Russian social media accounts have been widely circulating a video over the past few weeks that shows a man dressed as a Ukrainian soldier acting out a scene in front of a camera. These accounts have claimed this video is proof that people are staging scenes of the war in Ukraine. Turns out, however, the video was filmed during the shooting of a music video by a Ukrainian artist whose music represents the “pain of war”.

True. The video of Putin saying Russian troops would “stand behind the people,” and dare Ukrainian troops to “shoot their own people” is genuine. The statement was made during his 2014 press conference. While it is unclear if he implied using them as human shields, he did specify “not in front of them, but behind,” further supporting that interpretation.

After the rockets comes the propaganda – pro-Russian voices have claimed that wounded people in Kyiv were just actors staging their suffering. But a DW fact check shows that the victims are real.

Pro-Russian accounts claim that Ukrainian “propaganda” and mainstream Western media are showing fake victims, following a Russian missile strike in Kyiv on October 10. AP and Reuters reporters on the scene were able to confirm that the civilians in the viral posts are real victims of the war in Ukraine. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.

A screenshot of a Gettr post critical of U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine has been attributed to Kid Rock, but it originated on a fan account. We couldn’t find a Gettr account for Kid Rock, and it’s not listed among the social media accounts on his website. Kid Rock’s website links to his YouTube account and his verified Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. We’ve previously debunked claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy owns a $35 million home in Florida. We couldn’t find any credible sources to corroborate the claim in this Gettr post, either. As for the claim that Kid Rock authored it, we rate that False.

Germans have not been chopping down trees in Tiergarten, Berlin, to meet energy needs. The claim is a misquote from a Bloomberg article about firewood demand. While the article mentions that residents in the German capital did resort to felling parts of the park after the Second World War, the article clearly states that no such thing has happened today following Russia’s shutdown of gas supplies to Europe. The misquote, however, has been widely shared by pro-Russian accounts to support their narrative about the energy crisis in Europe.

A truck, a boat and an ID card – the search for clues after the Crimea bridge explosion is mired with fakes. One particularly clumsy deception comes from the Russian secret service, as our fact check shows.

Pro-Russian social media accounts have been circulating photos and a video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky standing in front of a green screen, claiming that this image offers proof that the videos that he publishes on social media are filmed in a studio and not on the ground as claimed. However, these pictures don”t prove anything of the sort - they were taken during a forum where the president appeared as a hologram.

Screenshots of a BBC news report shared on social media purport to show a journalist exaggerating the danger of a Russian attack on Irpin, Ukraine. This is misleading; the reporter has refuted the claim, and the posts ignore the shelling that took place in the area where the footage was filmed.

No, a viral dashcam video doesn’t show the Crimean Bridge explosion. The video was first posted months before the explosion took place and is a compilation of multiple videos.

An image of Kim Jong Un has been shared repeatedly in posts that claim the North Korean leader visited Moscow as Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech in September 2022. Some posts written in Korean also claim South Korean media ignored Kim’s visit. But the claim — which circulated as Russia pushed on with its war in neighbouring Ukraine — is false. The posts show Kim’s visit to the Russian port city of Vladivostok in April 2019 for a summit with Putin.

General Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, recently posted a photo of himself on Twitter allegedly wearing a bracelet with a swastika. In fact, what appears to be a swastika is actually a Viking symbol. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.