A story making the rounds online about Ukrainian refugees is false and is intentionally stylized as a Bild news story. In fact, the video is a collage of several videos from previous years.
A video viewed more than 300,000 times on Facebook has been shared alongside claims that it shows Russian and Ukrainian soldiers fighting in February 2022. This is false; the video, which has been online since at least 2019, shows troops of the French Foreign Legion in battle, although it remains unclear where the footage was filmed.
A Reuters photo of Ukrainians training for combat is being used as supposed evidence that the war there is fake. It's not.
A screenshot of a tweet by conservative activist Jack Posobiec is spreading on social media as evidence that the war in Ukraine is staged.
Trudy Rubin, a foreign affairs columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote from outside of Kyiv in February that civilian trainees were "practicing with cardboard guns or plastic paintball guns or hunting rifles from home until they are provided military weapons."
Even members of the U.S. military have used paintball guns for training exercises.
The war in Ukraine is real, and it has been well-documented by reporters and citizens on the ground in the country.
We rate claims that this photo proves it's being staged Pants on Fire.
Ukraine is not the only country saying that Russia has incurred significant losses in its war against Ukraine, the British Ministry of Defense has also said the same thing. Russian allegations that Ukraine is "producing propaganda that even the West does not believe" are simply lies. The heavy losses of the Russian army are becoming increasingly obvious not only to Ukrainians, but also to foreign analysts.
Despite jitters over the Ukraine war in many countries and Finland's decision to seek NATO membership, tanks have not been sent to the Finnish border with Russia, despite a viral video suggesting just that. We also look at false claims surrounding a recent protest in Paris.
Verdict: False
The footage is from a military-based video game. It does not show a genuine Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian warship.
Social media posts claim a photo shows cars damaged by a Russian bomb near a building with intact windows in Bucha, suggesting it proves violence in the Ukrainian town was staged. But there is no evidence of a strike near the building, and residents said military vehicles were used to upend the cars -- accounts confirmed by media reports and other images from the town.
After Russia pressed on with its invasion of Ukraine, a video surfaced in social media posts in various languages claiming it shows a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian tanks. But the footage -- which has been viewed tens of thousands of times -- has been shared in a false context. It has circulated since March 2020 in reports about a Turkish drone assault on Syrian forces.
Iterations of the collage have been online since at least 2015 and appear to be screenshots of a video that shows pro-Russian forces taking control of the eastern Ukrainian city of Debaltseve. It's unrelated to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The photos are real, but they're outdated and do not appear to have been taken in Mariupol. The social media posts were miscaptioned.
Our ruling
A collage shared online claims to show Russian forces replacing the Ukrainian flag with the Soviet Flag in Mariupol in 2022.
Iterations of the collage have been online since at least 2015 and appear to feature screenshots of a video that shows pro-Russian forces taking control of the eastern Ukrainian city of Debaltseve.
It's unrelated to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
We rate this False.
Footage of two men handling a mannequin is circulating in social media posts that claim it shows a "prop" passed off as a dead body in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, where dozens of corpses were discovered in April after Russian forces retreated. In fact, the video -- viewed hundreds of thousands of times -- was not filmed in Bucha. It was recorded for a Russian TV drama in Vsevolozhsk near Saint Petersburg on March 20, 2022.