Latest fact checks & sources

Posts shared online claim to show members of a Russian military choir being arrested for singing anti-war songs. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin has indeed cracked down on people spreading “false information” about the war in Ukraine, leading to many people’s arrests, this video is not an example of that. In fact, it shows an incident from 2015 when the choir performed a song from a James Bond film.

Facebook posts published in Ethiopia and Nigeria have claimed that Africans trying to flee the war in Ukraine have been mistreated and racially discriminated against based on images showing black men with visible injuries being held in captivity. There have been widespread reports about the mistreatment of Africans trying to leave the country, but these images were taken at a refugee camp in Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the north coast of Morocco – not in Ukraine.

An image comparing what appears to be an Italian television network’s coverage of the war in Ukraine to a shot from a movie has spread online in posts claiming the media is lying about Russia’s invasion. But the network’s parent company rejected the claim, a word is missing from the TGCOM24 logo used in the posts, and AFP found no evidence of the footage being broadcast on the channel.

Social media posts feature a picture of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky holding a soccer jersey that has a swastika in place of a number. But AFP found that the posts used a digitally manipulated image superimposing the Nazi symbol on a photo taken from the leader’s Instagram account.

Online posts claim the Statue of Liberty in New York City was adorned with a Ukrainian flag as a sign of solidarity following the Russian invasion. But a reverse image search found that the photo shows a replica Statue of Liberty located in Colmar, France, that was also photographed on March 2, 2022 by AFP.

Verdict: False The video shows footage from an open-world military simulator video game. It does not depict an actual Russian helicopter being shot down.

A West Virginia State Police captain confirmed that the Uber’s window decal was an expired inspection sticker from the state. But that doesn’t mean that the car itself wasn’t in Ukraine. The video showing the car was recorded in Irpin, Ukraine, according to Reuters, which owns the video. It’s not uncommon for cars to be exported from the U.S. to other countries, including Ukraine. Our ruling A Facebook post claimed that “a West Virginia inspection sticker on an Uber” proves the car was not in Ukraine. A West Virginia State Police Captain confirmed that the decal on the car was an expired sticker from the state. However, this doesn’t mean that the car wasn’t in Ukraine ‘ a spokesperson for Reuters, which owns the video, confirmed that the video was filmed there. It’s not uncommon for cars to be exported from the U.S. to other countries, including Ukraine. We rate this claim False.

An employee at state-owned Channel One in Russia recently interrupted a live news broadcast to protest the war in Ukraine. Multiple experts say there are live news broadcasts and other live events on Russian TV. A former employee of the station said that all Channel One news is live. An expert we spoke with said that’s because of the country’s many time zones. Our ruling A Facebook post said that a Russian journalist’s protest during a state TV broadcast couldn’t be real because “there are no live on air television broadcasts in Russia. None. Ever.” But experts we spoke with, including journalists who have worked in Russia, said that is not true. There are many live broadcasts, including the news show that was interrupted by an employee’s protest. There has been no evidence presented that shows her actions were staged as part of a Russian propaganda effort. We rate this claim False.

Conspiracy theorists and Russian apologists reached new lows in attacking the Ukrainian president in March 2022.

A photo of an elderly man clutching a cat has been shared in social media posts around the world that claim he was seeking shelter from Russian shelling in Ukraine. While millions of people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, the photo actually shows a man with his cat at the scene of a fire in Turkey in 2018.

A video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in Facebook posts that claim it shows Russian President Vladimir Putin trying to embarrass a “Japanese delegation” by bringing his dog to an official meeting. The posts — which circulated online after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — refer to Japan’s alignment with the United States and other countries, which have imposed sanctions on Moscow. But the video has been shared in a false context. It shows Putin bringing his dog to an interview with Japanese journalists at the Kremlin in 2016.

Social media posts shared in 2022 picture Ukrainian former professional boxer Wladimir Klitschko alongside text saying the athlete auctioned his Olympic gold medal to raise money for children in his home country. But the move is not related to the ongoing war with Russia; Klitschko sold his award in 2012, a decade before President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine.

Multiple megachurches around the United States have been raising funds to help Ukrainians during Russia’s invasion. Gateway Church, another megachurch in Texas, has set up a crisis relief fund to support people in Ukraine and the surrounding region. Saddleback Church, a megachurch located in Lake Forest, California, has an advance relief team connecting with local pastors in Ukraine and Poland who are caring for hundreds of Ukrainian refugees. The church’s website features ways people can help and has provided multiple updates on its efforts in the region. The Rock Church, a megachurch in San Diego, California, is directing people to its partner organization, Crisis Response International, and told PolitiFact that it’s in the process of establishing a Ukraine relief fund. Crossroads Church, an Ohio-based megachurch, partners with humanitarian and disaster relief organizations Convoy of Hope and World Vision, which both have operations on the ground in Ukraine. Other church networks, like the United Methodist Committee on Relief and Catholic Relief Services, are collecting donations and deploying staff and resources. We rate posts that say no megachurches are raising money for Ukraine relief False.

The VERIFY team confirmed a video of Ukraine President Zelenskyy telling his people to surrender is a deepfake. It was created using images from press conferences.

Tens of thousands of people have watched a video posted on Facebook that allegedly shows Ukrainians kneeling as a convoy carries religious relics through the streets of Kyiv to a bunker. However, this video is actually from several years ago and shows a funeral procession for fallen soldiers in another part of Ukraine.

Russian planes bombed a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9, killing three people and injuring at least 17, including two pregnant women seen in photos shared around the world. Social media posts falsely claimed one woman “posed” as the two women. One of the women died of her injuries, along with her baby; the other gave birth to a daughter.

A video has been viewed tens of thousands of times after it was shared in social media posts with a claim that it shows “a Ukrainian soldier killing Muslim Chechens during Ukraine’s attack on Chechnya”. However, the claim is false. The clip was actually taken from the opening scene of a French feature film called “The Search”, which shows the execution of a Chechen family by Russian soldiers. The 2014 movie was set against the backdrop of the Russian-Chechen war in 1999. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was Russia – not Ukraine – that fought wars in Chechnya.

Picture showing cars with smashed windows are circulating in multiple social media posts that claim they are vehicles in Ukraine targeted after the Russian invasion for displaying stickers of the Chinese flag. In fact, the pictures were digitally altered to add the flag and were taken years before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Verdict: False The woman pictured next to Zelenskyy is not the woman who died weeks earlier. There is no evidence the woman pictured in the post accompanying Zelenskyy has died.

A photo of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wearing military gear has been shared hundreds of times in social media posts alongside a claim that it shows him on the frontline after Russia invaded the neighbouring country in February 2022. However, the claim is false. The picture actually shows Zelensky visiting Ukraine’s eastern region in April 2021, nearly a year before the Russian invasion began.