Latest fact checks & sources

Social media posts featuring an image of a woman in military uniform claim she is Ukraine’s first female fighter pilot and that she died during Russia’s invasion. But the Ukrainian Defense Ministry says the photo shows a soldier who won a 2016 beauty contest organized by the military, and the country’s first female combat pilot is now a politician.

Social media posts claim US broadcaster CNN misrepresented an image of a 2015 explosion as being from the 2022 war in Ukraine. But the image shows an explosion in Kyiv and was released by the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 24, 2022, and the channel said the alleged screenshot of a CNN report featured in the posts is fake.

Footage of what looks like a news report has been circulating on Facebook in Nigeria claiming to show a BBC reporter broadcasting on the ongoing Ukraine-Russia crisis and warning of an impending nuclear war. But this is false; the video has been online since at least 2016. Furthermore, the BBC confirmed the footage is fictional.

During a 2013 speech, Vladimir Putin mentioned Satan and pedophilia, but he didn’t say that the West is controlled by Satanic pedophiles. The headline that Putin said the West is controlled by Satanic pedophiles was posted on a blog five years ago and also relies on this 2013 speech, but presents it as if Putin made the comments during former President Donald Trump’s tenure. The blog, like the headlines in the Faceook video, sound themes familiar among those who follow QAnon, a movement that claims without evidence that there is a global cabal of child sex traffickers that Trump is trying to thwart. The rest of the headlines that appear in the video vary in accuracy. “Putin calls Bill and Hillary Clinton ‘the same Satan'” was published in PJ Media in 2016 after Putin quoted a Russian proverb while talking about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s desire to be president like her husband, former President Bill Clinton. “As we say, husband and wife are the same Satan,” Putin said. “Putin: All U.S. presidents are puppets ‘ ‘dark men in suits rule America'” appeared on blog posts in 2017 that paraphrased comments Putin made to the French publication Le Figaro. According to an English Translation of Putin’s remarks that appeared on the Kremlin’s website, he did not mention puppets but said: “I have already spoken to three U.S. presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens with every administration.”

The people under the tarps aren’t crisis actors from Ukraine trying to fool people into thinking they are dead. They were part of a protest against climate change that was held in Vienna, Austria, on Feb. 4. The clip is from a Feb. 4 demonstration against climate change in Vienna. The reporter, Marvin Bergauer, is from an Austrian news channel called OE24 TV and is speaking German in the video. An English translation of the chyron on the video says “Vienna: Demo against climate policy.” The people under the tarps aren’t crisis actors ‘ from Germany, Ukraine or anywhere else ‘ trying to fool people into thinking that they are dead. They’re protesters from Austria in a video taken before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. We rate this False.

The clip does not show a Ukrainian woman teaching people how to drive an abandoned Russian armored carrier amid the war. The TikToker is a Russian auto-blogger named Nastya Tuman and the video is from February 2021. The Facebook video is a compilation of several clips she shared on her TikTok page on Feb. 16, 2021. Tuman speaks Russian throughout the videos and excitedly describes the vehicle, saying it has 8-wheel drive, a seating shooter and a hatch for the driver-mechanic. She also discusses how to start it, instructing viewers on how to turn it on and shift into gear. The clip was made by a Russian woman and is from February 2021. It is unrelated to the current conflict in Ukraine. We rate posts claiming otherwise False.

News reports, testimonies of citizens-turned-fighters, and a swift global response all fly in the face of baseless claims that Russia’s war on Ukraine is “staged.” “There is little to refute directly, other than to note that thousands or millions of people would have to be in on any conspiracy to fake a war, and like the 9/11 attacks (which some people also deny) there is substantial video footage of attacks on Ukrainian cities, Russian invading forces, and throngs of refugees,” Radnitz said. Nevertheless, he added, “a true believer will persist in denying all that evidence, something that is easier to do when the conflict is geographically distant and they do not personally know anyone directly affected by it.” With a war raging, the world responding and both sides of the conflict experiencing its effects, the claim that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is “scripted and staged” holds no merit. We rate it Pants on Fire!

“Maria Zakharova’s claim that Ukraine started this war is false. The Russian Federation illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, sparking broad international condemnation. On February 21, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine from the north, northeast, and from the Crimean Peninsula in the south, initiating a full-scale interstate war between Russia and Ukraine”.

A video has been viewed tens of thousands of times across social media platforms alongside a claim it shows missiles over Ukraine after Russian forces invaded on February 24. But the video has been shared in a false context: it shows digitally animated footage from the video game War Thunder that circulated online months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A video of a plane engulfed in flames and falling from the sky has been viewed more than 1.5 million times in social media posts that claim it shows a Russian fighter jet shot down by Ukrainian forces in February 2022. In reality, the video predates the Russian invasion of Ukraine and shows a Libyan jet targeted by rebels in 2011.

A video has circulated in social media posts that claim it shows Russian President Vladimir Putin praising Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan after the two leaders met in Moscow on the day Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine. The clip was viewed hundreds of thousands of times in posts by Pakistan-based social media users. In fact, the video’s English-language subtitles have been misleadingly altered. In the original clip, Putin was shown criticising Ukraine.

As the civilian death toll mounted in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, a video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times in social media posts that claim it shows a Ukrainian reporter inadvertently exposing fake war casualties in a live broadcast. This is false: the video shows a climate change protest in Austria that was staged weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.

WHEN Russia invaded Ukraine last week, several disinformations were in circulation which prompted the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to swing into action.

The video-sharing app TikTok has become a tool in the hybrid war in Ukraine, but fake news and scams connected to the conflict also abound on the platform. We take a closer look in this edition of Truth or Fake.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, images purporting to show Ukrainian acts of resistance have been shared widely on social networks. The Ukrainian population is indeed carrying out a strong resistance in several cities, but some of these posts are actually images taken out of context and have nothing to do with the ongoing conflict.

A video has been viewed tens of thousands of times on Facebook alongside a claim it shows Russia bombing Ukraine. The video was shared shortly after Russian forces invaded the neighbouring country. But the video has been shared in a false context: it is actually an animation clip that has circulated online since at least October 2021.

A Facebook post claims a video shows fighting in Ukraine. This is misleading; most of the footage was shot in Syria and released by Kurdish forces, while part of the clip is taken from CNN coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Social media posts claim US broadcaster ABC misrepresented a video of a 2018 gas explosion in Russia as footage from the war in Ukraine. This is false; the clip was shot in Ukraine by a Turkish news agency, and a similar video from AFP confirms that the incident took place following Russia’s 2022 invasion of its eastern European neighbor.

Footage of armored vehicles set alight by Molotov cocktails on a Ukrainian street is being presented on social media as local resistance against Russia’s ongoing invasion. This is false; the recording is from Ukraine, but it was shot in 2014 in Kyiv during the country’s popular protest movement, when demonstrators torched the army’s vehicles.

As Russia pressed on with its invasion of Ukraine, a video clip was viewed thousands of times in Facebook and YouTube posts that claimed it showed live footage of the fighting. In reality, the footage was taken from a combat video game called ARMA 3.