Two viral videos claim to show the Jan. 18 helicopter crash that killed Ukraine's interior minister and about a dozen others. These videos weren't from the crash.
As the war in Ukraine raged on in early 2023, rumors about the country's president rage with it. From claims about his career, to rumors about illicit drug use, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a magnet for doctored images, misinformation, and more.
Continue below for a collection of stories about the Ukraine president's history before and after the war began.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine this year kept our fact-checkers very busy. We wrote 92 articles debunking false claims about information related to the war. These ranged from claims the Bucha massacre was staged to false TV reports and accusations of Nazism among Ukrainians. To mark the end of the year, we made a list of some of our top fact-checks about Ukraine.
Four photos being shared on social media of a woman having war wound makeup applied to her face and body are from a medic training exercise in 2016.
At least one of the images was posted by an Instagram user whose profile describes her as a combat medic in Ukraine. The same woman appears in three of the photos.
A Twitter user with the same handle as the Instagram user tweeted Nov. 25 that "enemy propagandists" stole her photos from the 2016 training sessions to misrepresent them.
Allegations that images showing war devastation in Ukraine were staged have been shared on social media since Russia invaded the country in February.
We've debunked multiple claims about photos, including a false one that said a teacher injured on the first day of the war was a crisis actor.
Our ruling
An Instagram post claims that photos of war wound makeup being applied to a woman are fake combat photos, implying the violence in Ukraine isn't real.
But the photos can be traced to an Instagram user who described herself as a combat medic veteran. She shared at least one of the images on Instagram in 2016. A woman with the same handle on Twitter wrote that the photos were from training sessions and were being misrepresented by "enemy propagandists."
There is no evidence the photos were staged to show an injury from the current battle in Ukraine. We rate the claim False.
UPDATE, Dec. 1, 5:30 p.m. ET: The story was updated Dec. 1 to add the response from an Instagram user received after publication of this article.
Numerous accounts on Twitter and Telegram have been sharing a video they say is a report by Al Jazeera showing Nazi graffiti left by Ukrainian football fans during the kickoff game of the World Cup in Qatar on November 20. The media outlet, however, says that they didn"t make this video. Moreover, a number of clues have allowed us to establish that this is a fake news report and that the Nazi graffiti was, in fact, photoshopped.
An Al Jazeera spokesperson told VERIFY in an email: "The video in question is completely fake and Al Jazeera never published this or any other material related to it."
Verdict: False
This image is digitally fabricated. A spokesperson for Time Magazine confirmed in an email to Check Your Fact that the image is not an authentic cover.
Is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the author of a new book entitled "Mein Kampf", or "My Struggle", using the same graphic design as Adolf Hitler's manifesto? This is what many people online have been claiming to be the case since October 19, 2022. But the photos they use as proof are actually just photoshopped using old images. While the Ukrainian president is indeed preparing to release a book, it has a totally different title and cover design.
