Lt. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier Jr., commander of NATO's Allied Land Command, has not been captured by Russian forces in Mariupol, the Allied Land Command confirmed.
Cloutier posted photos from a recent event in Turkey to his LinkedIn profile, where he disputed the internet rumors alleging that he had been captured.
Journalists who were able to reach Bucha after the departure of the Russian troops witnessed streets lined with abandoned corpses, some of which showed signs of summary executions, such as hands tied behind their backs, and clearly visible bullet holes marking their bodies.
These pitiless reports led Ukrainian authorities and international analysts to accuse Russia of war crimes, but as soon as disturbing videos and pictures of the massacre started spreading online, Russian authorities denied the allegations, claiming that the pictures were a “provocation” and “a staged performance” organized by Ukrainian forces “for the Western media”. As already happened after the bombing of the pediatric hospital in Mariupol, Russia started a massive disinformation campaign in order to deny the massacre through the exploitation of conspiracy theories circulating online.
Open source evidence exists that appears to run counter to claims of elaborate fakes and staged productions, as well as calling into question the apparent timeline of events as depicted by Russia in recent days.
Images published on April 3 showed the bodies of more than a dozen civilians who had been killed in Bucha, a town near Kyiv that had been occupied by the Russian army. Some of the bodies had their hands tied and some were shot in the head. Since then, several Russian media outlets and pro-Russian social media accounts have published a video that claims to show evidence the corpses in this video were staged. The FRANCE 24 Observers team analysed its claims.
The Russian Ministry of Defense and other top Russian officials claimed that a video of a car driving through Ukraine showed two crisis actors playing the role of dead Ukrainians in a staged massacre. On Telegram and Twitter, they claimed that the video showed one person moving their arm, and another person seen in the car's mirror sitting up.
The video does not show a person raising an arm as the car drives by; it shows a mark floating across the car's windshield ' perhaps a drop of water or a speck of dirt.
The video does not show someone sitting up after the car drives by; it shows a stationary corpse through the lens of the car's passenger-side mirror, which has distorting effects.
Our ruling
The Russian Ministry of Defense said a video taken from a car driving through Bucha, Ukraine, shows a corpse "moving his arm," and then "in the rear view mirror the 'corpse' sits down."
Both claims misrepresent what the video in question shows.
The video shows a mark floating across the car's windshield ' perhaps a drop of water or a speck of dirt ' which Russia officials falsely portrayed as of a corpse "moving his arm."
Similarly, what Russian officials falsely claimed was a corpse sitting up was actually a dead person whose body appeared distorted due to the shape of the car's passenger-side mirror.
We rate this claim False.
Social media users have been circulating two photos showing a Ukrainian airplane that they say smacked into a street sign because it was flying low to avoid Russian radar. In reality, this incident happened during a training exercise back in August 2020 and has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia’s talk of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine is a non-starter in peace negotiations. We’ll explain what these claims are all about and why experts say they are misleading.
A recent Facebook post falsely claims that CNN footage from the war in Ukraine was faked, citing a firefighter’s jacket bearing the name of a Canadian city. But the footage was shot in Ukraine. The jacket was donated by a Canadian organization.
