In a new Russian disinformation campaign uncovered by Microsoft, celebrities such as Elijah Wood, Priscilla Presley and Mike Tyson have been tricked into recording a video via the Cameo app that was later doctored and used for anti-Zelensky propaganda. We tell you more in this edition of Truth or Fake.
A fabricated video edited in the social media style of American media outlet USA Today claims a member of the Ukrainian delegation provoked a drunken bar fight in New York during President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to the US, before being detained by police. However, in this edition of Truth or Fake, Vedika Bahl uses geolocation tools to verify that the "brawl" images were filmed around 18 kilometres away from the alleged site. Both USA Today and the New York police dismissed the reports as fake.
A video has been circulating online that allegedly shows "Lord of the Rings" actor Elijah Wood giving the Ukrainian president advice on how to tackle his alleged drug and alcohol addictions. He can be seen recording himself and talking to a so-called "Vladimir". However, the video has been heavily edited and his agent has confirmed it was not published by the actor.
Apart from the fact that the video has been bizarrely edited, it does not mention Zelensky, only someone named Vladimir, and is attributed to an Instagram account with no web presence.
Elijah Wood does not have a public Instagram account and the video being shared of him online, allegedly asking Zelensky to seek treatment, is the only recording available. The video appears to have been spread as a Russian propaganda effort and to promote a dubious documentary that falsely credits Tom Cruise as its star.
Although Newsweek is yet to hear from Wood's representatives for comment, we are confident that the video and claims surrounding it are, respectively, inauthentic and false.
An edited video apparently showing cocaine on the desk of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has circulated on social media around the world. It is the latest in a string of disinformation targeting the leader since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The suspicious, powder-like pile did not appear in the original video posted on Zelensky's Instagram account.
A video circulating on social media shows a poster of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky apparently "snorting" cash donations from passers-by in Milan. But visual clues in the clip, and the complete lack of eye-witnesses, indicate that it is a fake.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been the subject of numerous false rumors, particularly in the form of doctored or misleading photographs and video footage.
From a manipulated deepfake video of Zelenskyy supposedly telling Ukrainian soldiers to surrender to Russia to false claims he displayed Nazi logos on his clothes, there is no shortage of examples.
The war in Ukraine has been accompanied by a ferocious battle of disinformation, waged in particular by pro-Russian agitators seeking to distort and shift the blame for many atrocities on the ground. They have sought to depict the Ukrainian side as Nazis or suggest that Western support for Kyiv is evaporating. Here are some of the main narratives, false or misleading, that have been fact-checked over the past year by AFP's digital verification teams.
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.
In recent weeks, people have been sharing at least three videos purporting to show Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky either using cocaine or making incoherent remarks after allegedly consuming drugs. But these videos have been cut misleadingly and sometimes even digitally manipulated.
