Since the Russian war in Ukraine began, misinformation has been spreading widely. And one of the narratives we've seen again and again is the idea that Ukraine has been "staging" atrocities to sway public opinion in Western media outlets. Here's a closer look at three videos we've seen and debunked.
Ukraine is apparently in the process of developing a so-called dirty bomb - a bomb containing radioactive elements - or, at least, that's the narrative that Moscow has been peddling since October 23, 2022. The Russian Ministry of Defence posted these claims to Telegram and Twitter, along with illustrated documents meant to support these claims. But the images published in these documents are old and some of them were even taken in Russia.
A recent Instagram post sharing a TikTok video issues a "wake up call," purportedly pointing to several clips as evidence that scenes of war in Ukraine have been staged.
Using reverse image searches and InVid, a site that helps identify the origins of video clips, we found the ones featured in the Instagram post, and neither is meant to show real footage of the war in Ukraine.
Those claims were wrong, and so is this one. We rate the claim that these clips show fake war footage in Ukraine Pants on Fire.
Several Thai posts have shared a misleading claim that the Finnish government advised its citizens to urgently buy iodine tablets after an escalation of the war in Ukraine. It circulated in October 2022 after the Nordic country updated its guidelines on the use of iodine in case of a radiation hazard. A government official told AFP that events in Ukraine would not compromise radiation safety in Finland. They added that their guidelines aim to ensure there is protection for the most vulnerable in case of an emergency resulting from a nuclear reactor accident, as they are heavily dependent on nuclear power.
Uganda's president came out as an early supporter of russia but this is not a real CNN headline.
The post appears to be an altered screenshot of a 2014 story on CNN's website. The story features a paused video of Museveni in which he appears wearing the same outfit and in front of the same background as the image of him in the Instagram post.
We found no credible news reports or other sources documenting Museveni as saying it would be disgusting to support Ukraine.
We rate that claim False.
A viral post on Facebook claims to show a convoy of NATO military advisers being destroyed by Russian missiles. While many users believe that the images represent actual fighting, they were actually taken from a war video game series called Arma 3. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.
Pro-Russian social media accounts have been widely circulating a video over the past few weeks that shows a man dressed as a Ukrainian soldier acting out a scene in front of a camera. These accounts have claimed this video is proof that people are staging scenes of the war in Ukraine. Turns out, however, the video was filmed during the shooting of a music video by a Ukrainian artist whose music represents the "pain of war".
This photo was altered. In the original, Zelenskyy is holding a jersey that has the number 95, not a swastika.
The original image was distributed by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service in June 2021. According to a caption on Agence France-Presse's website, it shows him "posing with a jersey of Ukraine's national football team."
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has pushed the idea that the effort is one of "denazification," a narrative historians have decried as "false and destructive."
We rate claims Zelenskyy was holding a jersey with a swastika False.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, repeated false claims have appeared on social media alleging that the entire conflict is being staged. FRANCE 24's fact-checking team debunk the latest example: two videos that show a man in Ukrainian army uniform being filmed, as he appears to act out a scene on the battlefield.
Pro-Russian social media accounts have been circulating photos and a video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky standing in front of a green screen, claiming that this image offers proof that the videos that he publishes on social media are filmed in a studio and not on the ground as claimed. However, these pictures don"t prove anything of the sort - they were taken during a forum where the president appeared as a hologram.