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.
A false rumor on Twitter has been traced by the BBC back to pro-Kremlin propaganda channels.
The deliberately misleading Twitter post falsely claims that weapons possibly among those sent to Ukraine were used against police in the recent riots in France (summer 2023). The attached image shows a fabricated “screenshot” of a non-existent news article.
So far Newsweek has been unable to find any evidence to support the "meat cube" claims.
According to local reports, the images of slabs of meat packed in between wooden craters show leftovers of expired animal feed in Russia's Belgorod region, not the bodies of Russian soldiers.
Several churches and a Jewish yeshiva destroyed or damaged by Russian shelling. BBC News report from March 2022.
UNESCO list of damaged cultural sites in Ukraine - 260 as of 19 June. (Note that this list includes only those sites that have been verified by UNESCO - a complete list would be far longer.)
The video shared on Twitter has been edited. The explosion seen in the film is a video effect, available on TikTok.
The original video, which has been shared on other social media for at least seven months, shows the soldier using the shell to hammer a component into the tank before turning and smiling at a group behind him.
The photo used in the Kennedy campaign ad is from a picture used to help illustrate designs for online stores. The same retouched photo has been used by multiple online outlets.
While Newsweek was unable to find the location of the store, it does appear to have been shot in Russia or a Russian-speaking region.
However, there is no suggestion the choice of the photo was deliberate and is far likelier to have been an oversight of the RFK Jr. campaign team. Other photos the campaign has used for its merchandise were also shot in other locations around the world.
Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenary force launched a brief rebellion in Russia in June 2023.
BBC article: Introduction to the Wagner Group, in the wake of their failed coup attempt against Putin (24 June, 2023)
An introduction to the Wagner Group, with many links to high-quality sources.