Sick: BBC's fact-checking team have traced false claims of "baby factories" in Ukraine back to a notorious online hoax factory.
"Who would possibly lie about something like that?" you might reasonably ask yourself. Depressingly, we have the answer to that question.
Russian propaganda is spreading another fake in the form of a "questionnaire" filled with numerous errors and listing military activities which simply do not exist in the Ukrainian military. Children and minors are not involved in Ukraine's military service in any way. Mobilization is mandatory for individuals aged 18 to 60.
StopFake located the video being circulated in Russian media claiming to show children being sent to the front. The video turned out to be of an adult Ukrainian National guard serviceman.
A recent blog post builds on a fictitious narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin is stymieing the production of adrenochrome in Ukraine.......We found no credible news reports or sources to corroborate the unfounded allegations, which were published on Real Raw News, a site that regularly posts fake news. The blog's stories are written 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.
The same site wrote separately that Putin intercepted a shipment of adrenochrome bound for the United States. We rated that Pants on Fire!......We rate claims that Putin destroyed an adrenochrome warehouse in Ukraine Pants on Fire!
Adrenochrome features heavily in QAnon conspiracy theories, which purport the baseless idea that a global cabal of pedophiles is harvesting the chemical from the blood of children to stay young and healthy.
That's false, and so is the claim that Putin foiled a shipment of it.
We found no credible news reports or other sources to corroborate the claims in this post.
Real Raw News has a disclaimer saying it contains "humor, parody and satire," though the author has defended his stories as truth. The website also regularly publishes false, fantastical stories authored by someone using a pseudonym.
We rate this baseless post Pants on Fire!
Claims that electricity is redirected from schools and kindergartens to elite resorts is a manipulative distortion of reality. For two days in a row, several towns in the Khust district of the Transcarpathian region allegedly were not affected by the regional power outage schedules. According to the Transcarpathian Regional State Administration chairman, there are indeed recreation centers in these towns. However, it is extremely difficult to establish a causal relationship between these events, since recreation centers are located throughout all of Transcarpathia, and not only in the Khust region. It is impossible to selectively reroute electricity from schools and kindergartens to recreation centers.
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!
An audio recording is being circulated online as "evidence" of Ukrainian
"sabotage", however the recording first surfaced online at least in 2018
when it was widely circulated in Kazakhstan.
The document being circulated online purported to be a Ukrainian draft notice is a fake. This document does not bear any similarity to an official Ukrainian draft notice, it contains the wrong category names and does not contain pertinent information that is part of a genuine draft notice. The term military commissariat is repeatedly used in the fake document. However, as of 2021 Ukrainian enlistment centers are called Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centers. An analysis of the seal used in the document in question also shows that it was doctored and is not the seal of the Bila Tserkva Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center.
Is Ukraine sending children to fight on the front lines of the war? That's what some people on social media are claiming. As proof, they cite a video showing three very young-looking soldiers, which has been circulating online since November 8. It turns out, however, that we could identify two of the three people pictured in the footage and they are young adults - 23 and 25 years old. Furthermore, our team spoke to the NGO Amnesty International, which said that it had no knowledge of documented cases of child soldiers in the Ukrainian Army.
