This story was fabricated. It appeared on Real Raw News, a site that regularly publishes false, fantastical stories authored by someone using a pseudonym.
Real Raw News stories are authored by someone using a pseudonym and the site has a disclaimer saying it contains "humor, parody and satire," though the author has defended his stories as truth.
We found no credible news reports or other sources to corroborate the claims in this post.
QAnon promotes a number of conspiracy theories that invoke pedophilia and a Democratic cabal. QAnon adherents were present during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These ideas also infiltrated political discourse as recently as the 2022 midterm elections.
We rate this claim Pants on Fire!
Verdict: False
There is no evidence suggesting any children have been rescued from Bidenâs properties. There is also no evidence suggesting Biden himself owns any properties in Ukraine.
This photo has nothing to do with the Ukrainian national movement and with the events of the 1943 Volyn tragedy. The children in the photo were killed by their own mother Marianna Dolinska on the night of December 11-12, 1923, in the village of Antoniowka near the Polish city Radom.
The U.S. has spent $53 billion on aid to Ukraine as part of a bipartisan effort to oppose Russia's invasion of the fledgling democracy.
More than $3 billion goes toward U.S. schools safety equipment and personnel every year, according to market research analysis and federal figures.
Researchers largely agree that armed officers at K-12 schools do not prevent mass shootings or other gun-related incidents from happening.
Instead, experts recommend threat assessment programs to help school staff identify behavioral warning signs among students and intervene to provide support before violent incidents occur.
Our ruling
A Facebook post claimed that with the $53 billion spent in Ukraine aid, the U.S. "could pay five SWAT members $80,000 each and have them at EVERY school front door."
The U.S. has allocated about $53 billion in aid to Ukraine. And if one wanted to pay this amount to station five SWAT members at every public and private K-12 school in the country, it would also add up to about $53 billion over one year.
But that statement alone lacks context about current security funding for schools and what research shows about the effect of such measures.
More than $2.7 billion is already spent each year on school safety equipment and services nationwide. And this $53 billion, if spent as the claim suggested, would cover just one year of SWAT team coverage for schools.
Additionally, research shows that the presence of armed officers on campuses does not help prevent school shootings from happening.
We rate this claim Half True.
This unfounded claim originated on a website known for publishing misinformation.
Putin has freed 35,000 children in Ukraine, a country he's invaded, or anywhere else. There are no credible sources nor news reports to support this.
Searching for evidence that Putin saved thousands of children, we only found articles reporting that Russian police jailed several children for leaving flowers at Ukraine's embassy in Moscow.
We rate this post Pants on Fire!
The tweet was fabricated and did not originate with CNN.
The photo in the post was taken in 2017. It was published in a March 30, 2022, story by CNN about the Azov Battalion of the Ukraine military. In that story, the photo caption says it was taken outside Kyiv on July 14, 2017, and shows "a student at a paramilitary camp for children call(ing) the rank to attention."
The AP confirmed with the photographer, Alex Masi, that it was taken at a "summer camp from 2016-17, where kids learn about the realities of war."
CNN did not tweet about "brave children" in Ukraine signing up to fight Russia, and we rate the claim Pants on Fire!
Other countries have worse money laundering and human trafficking problems than Ukraine, according to experts and government reports.
Now amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a post claiming Ukraine is the "money laundering and child sex trafficking capital of the world!"
According to the State Department's latest Trafficking in Persons report, Russia has a more serious problem with child sex trafficking than Ukraine. Both countries struggle with the issue, the report said, but Ukraine took action to address it between 2020 and 2021, while Russia failed to make "significant efforts" to eliminate the problem.
While Ukraine convicted traffickers, increased financial assistance to victims, and launched awareness campaigns, Russia "convicted only one trafficker," failed to "initiate any new prosecutions of suspected traffickers," and "offered no funding or programs to provide services for trafficking victims."
Russia, not Ukraine, is among 11 governments the report says have "a documented 'policy or pattern' of human trafficking, trafficking in government-funded programs, forced labor in government-affiliated medical services or other sectors, sexual slavery in government camps, or employment or recruitment of child soldiers.
The report also ranks countries based on the extent of government efforts to meet minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking. Tier 1, the United States' ranking, is the highest, but it doesn't mean the country has no human trafficking problems. Rather, it means the country fully meets minimum standards to eliminate trafficking. Tier 2 ' Ukraine's tier ' means a country's government doesn't fully meet the minimum standards but is making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance. Tier 3 includes countries such as Afghanistan and Russia that don't meet the minimum standards and aren't trying to.
We rate this post False.
This claim originated in an article published by a website known for sharing misinformation, including one previous false claim on Ukraine.
• Russia's president stated many reasons for the invasion. Ending child trafficking was not among them.
• According to the U.S. State Department, Russia is failing to deal with human trafficking within its own borders.
Our ruling
A post on Facebook alleged that Russia started its invasion of Ukraine to fight child trafficking.
The claim originates in an article published by a website known for fabricating stories and sources.
There is no evidence that ending child trafficking is a goal of the war in Ukraine. Russia itself is failing to deal with human trafficking within its own borders, according to a report by the U.S. State Department.
And while Putin has been very descriptive about his reasons for invading Ukraine, child trafficking has never been mentioned.
We rate the post False.
Russian planes bombed a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9, killing three people and injuring at least 17, including two pregnant women seen in photos shared around the world. Social media posts falsely claimed one woman “posed” as the two women. One of the women died of her injuries, along with her baby; the other gave birth to a daughter.
A story that claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin bombed a villa in Ukraine owned by President Joe Biden is bogus. It was created by a misinformation website that regularly publishes made-up stories. We found no evidence that Biden has a villa in Ukraine.
Claims about nefarious biolabs in Ukraine ' some supposedly "U.S. owned" ' are also fabricated, and part of disinformation efforts by Russians.
It's unclear what the blog is talking about in its reference to "pedophile rings," but it claims that Putin is wiping out "child trafficking covens" in Ukraine, and we found no evidence that these exist.
