The Verdict: False
There is no evidence that President Zelenskyy bought a casino in Cyprus; the claim originated from a fake website impersonating the resort.
A video of a massive fire circulated widely on social media in late April along with captions claiming it showed a strike by the Russian army on a NATO weapons convoy en route to Ukraine. However, it turns out that this is an old video that wasn't filmed anywhere near Ukraine.
The claim that Zelenskyy purchased a casino in Cyprus is belied by the fact that the owners of that casino say they have not sold it, by the fact that the original reporting on the claim was based on a fake website, and by the fact that this original reporting was deleted. Because no real evidence supports the claim, Snopes rates it "False."
The information about the purchase of a hotel is disinformation. The President of Cyprus, the Ukrainian Embassy in Cyprus, and the company that owns the hotel have denied the allegation about the purchase of the hotel by Zelenskyy or a related company. Moreover, the website on which the allegation about Zelenskyy's connection to the hotel appeared turned out to be a clone of the hotel's website and a fake website that was created three days before the information was spread.
The fake Cruise video, which appeared on the Telegram messaging platform last year, is called Olympics Has Fallen and uses artificial intelligence-generated audio of the film star's voice to present a 'strange, meandering script' disparaging the IOC. The documentary, whose title riffs on the Gerard Butler action film Olympus Has Fallen, also claims falsely to have been produced by Netflix and is promoted with bogus five-star reviews from the New York Times and the BBC.
Does a 50-second video show authentic remarks by U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller discussing "military targets" in the Russian city of Belgorod, with "virtually no civilians left" in that city?
No, that's not true: The video mixes video of different briefings, during which Miller made no such remarks. The words falsely attributed to him in the video were AI-generated. The State Department labeled the video a deepfake.
The video of fake remarks was also posted by the Russian Embassy in South Africa account on X, but later that post was deleted.
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative framing popular protests as Western-led colour revolutions, in this case the mobilisations against the approval of the so-called 'foreign agents law' in Georgia.
False information about the assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on 26 May 2024 attempting to smear Ukraine.
The suspect, Juraj Cintula, does not have a wife from Ukraine. The Slovak police have refuted these rumours and called them false.
A conspiracy theory being used as a justification for a potential war crime, accusing Ukraine of using its population as human shields.
There is no evidence to support the thesis that a military store and command post were hidden inside the shopping centre. Instead, all indications point to Russia deliberately attacking civilians using two guided bombs. Some videos show a strong fire and detonations inside the burning premises. However, all shopping centres containing construction materials and pressurised containers can burn intensely and have explosions inside. This does not prove that a command post or weapons storage was hidden inside.
