On the sidelines of President Volodymyr Zelensky's European tour, online claims went viral that the Ukrainian president has purchased luxury villas in Crimea, Italy and England with Western military aid money. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.
An old video of a Russian tank toppling over at a military parade has been viewed tens of thousands of times in posts that misleadingly claim the driver who overturned the vehicle subsequently avoided being sent to the front line in the war against Ukraine. The clip -- which recirculated shortly after a military parade in Moscow in May 2023 -- corresponds with media reports from 2018 about an accident at another event in the western Russian city of Kursk.
Verdict: False
The screenshot appears to be digitally fabricated, as the headline neither appears on the outletâs website nor its social media accounts. A reverse image search reveals the photos were created using artificial intelligence (AI).
The video circulating online is satirical and its author is not and has
never been a 'Ukrainian refugee in Europe.' The woman from the video
permanently lives in Ukraine and films many satirical sketches on TikTok.
However, Russian propaganda used the 48-second joke video to once again
discredit Ukrainian refugees.
A video has surfaced in social media posts that falsely claim it shows protesters rallying against Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May 2023. While Russians have genuinely protested against Putin's war in Ukraine, the footage shows an anti-Kremlin protest in May 2013.
Former Commander of US Forces in Europe, Ben Hodges, said nothing about the "future failure" of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. On the contrary, the general expressed cautious optimism regarding the effectiveness of the Ukrainian army in operations against Russian occupiers.
The Russian media spread the video with grammatical errors in the accompanying text, which appears to have been written by a person who does not speak Ukrainian. In addition, propaganda announced matches that do not correspond to the official Premier League schedule. In a comment to StopFake, the Ukrainian Football Association also denied the information spread by Russian media.
A photo of a burning building is being shared on Twitter alongside claims it shows a fire at a factory supplying aircraft engines to Russia's military amid its war in Ukraine. This is false; the image first appeared in 2018 and shows an oil refinery that caught fire, according to reports from the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Moscow and news articles from the time.
The stylized Ukrainian coat of arms on President Zelenskyi's sweatshirt is one of many other variations of the Ukrainian trident, which has been used in state heraldry for centuries.
The New York Times article does not claim that Ukraine opposes peace and negotiations. On the contrary, it emphasizes that the main topic of the meeting between President Zelenskyi and the Pope was precisely the Peace Formula - the Ukrainian scenario for the end of the war. At the same time, Zelenskyi really considers the negotiations with Putin meaningless.