Social media posts claim a photo of a man in samurai regalia shows Japan’s ambassador to Ukraine, saying he chose to stay and fight invading Russian forces. This is false; the image pictures Ukraine’s ambassador to Japan, who tweeted it prior to the invasion.

A video of military planes flying in formation over residential buildings has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in posts that claim it shows Russian fighter jets entering neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022. The posts circulated online within hours of Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashing a full-scale ground invasion and air assault on Ukraine. The footage, however, has been shared in a false context. It has circulated since at least 2020 in social media posts about rehearsals for a Victory Day air show in Russia.

After Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, dramatic footage of a huge explosion was viewed tens of thousands of times in social media posts that claimed it shows buildings destroyed by Russian air strikes. In fact, the video shows a deadly blast that ripped through the Lebanese capital Beirut in August 2020.

Disinformation is part and parcel of the approach to war as seen in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian Armed Forces are holding back the Russian aggressor’s offensive.

Ukrainians did not shoot at the Russian border checkpoint.

The Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have denied this information. The Ukrainian military did not put down their weapons and did not side with the Luhansk People’s Republic.

The information has been spread in social networks that the Joint Forces Operation in Donbas headquarters has been practically destroyed. The news source is the post of the head of the “DPR” Denis Pushilin. However, this is fake. The adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Anton Gerashchenko, has already refuted it.

A media specialised in putting the spotlight on Russian disinformation has highlighted a false flag attack in eastern Ukraine that pro-Russian media outlets were pinning on Kyiv. Corpses likely retrieved from a morgue were used to set the scene.

How then can the well-oiled Russian machine produce such “low-cost” disinformation? “Simply because, for the moment, the Russian authorities do not need to do better.” […] What’s more, it’s not so much the quality as the quantity of disinformation that matters. “The goal is to create so many different – and sometimes even contradictory – versions of what is happening at the border that no one can really distinguish the true from the false anymore.”

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did not report receiving any donations from the Ukrainian government or Ukrainian nationals. Those donations would have been illegal. A spokesperson for Marjorie Taylor Greene cited a 2015 Wall Street Journal graphic that has been frequently misrepresented online. The chart shows donations to the Clinton Foundation between 1999 and 2014 by the nationality of the individuals who made them; it does not say anything about donations to the foundation by foreign governments. The Clinton Foundation said it has never received donations from Ukraine’s government. Our ruling Greene said, “Ukraine was the No. 1 donor to Hillary Clinton when she was running for president.” Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did not report any donations from Ukraine or Ukrainian nationals ‘ a move that would have broken the law. Asked for evidence to support Greene’s claim, the congresswoman’s spokesperson did not cite any campaign donations. He pointed instead to a Wall Street Journal chart that mapped large individual donations between 1999 and 2014 to the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit organization. The chart was a ranking of the top foreign donors by nationality, not contributions from foreign governments. The Clinton Foundation said it has never received any funding from the Ukrainian government. We rate Greene’s statement False.

Reports of a sabotage near Horlivka are a provocation spread by the DPR and Russia. Via verifying the video metadata, we found out that it had been taken beforehand. A process of verifying on the Metadata2go resource showed that the video had been created on February 8, 2022. And the militants published it as an evidence of the sabotage on February 18. That is to say, that the provocation has been prepared earlier.

Historians cite upwards of a dozen examples dating back to the 1500s in which Russia or the Soviet Union attacked another country without being militarily attacked first. • Russia may offer various justifications for why it attacked another country in these instances, but each of these examples involved militarily unprovoked actions by Russia or the Soviet Union. Our ruling Peskov said, “Russia has never attacked anyone throughout its history.” Historians cite upwards of a dozen examples dating back to the 1500s in which Russia or the Soviet Union attacked another country without being militarily attacked first. Russia may offer various justifications for why it attacked another country in these instances, but contrary to Peskov’s statement, each of these examples did involve militarily unprovoked actions by Russia or the Soviet Union. We rate the statement Pants on Fire.

Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance said the State Department’s focus on transgender rights is inflaming the conflict with Russia in Ukraine. Russia has placed as many as 150,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders. Russia has said Ukraine’s ties to NATO are a key threat to Russia’s national security. Our ruling Vance said that Biden risks war with Russia because Putin doesn’t “believe in transgender rights.” There is a risk of war, but it is because of Russia’s focus on Ukraine’s ties to the west and the buildup of Russian forces along Ukraine’s border. The State Department noted the threats against transgender people as one issue among many in a report on human rights. It gave much more space to the danger posed by Russia’s military policies in its most recent annual threat assessment. The risk of war in Ukraine is not affected by Putin’s attitude toward transgender rights. We rate this claim Pants on Fire. Update: This story has been updated to include a response we received from the Vance campaign shortly after initial publication.

Vladimir Putin’s online followers love sharing videos or photos of the Russian president that play up his strongman image. But sometimes in doing so, they share fake and manipulated videos – which then go viral. The Truth or Fake team take a look at two examples.

Whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, there are plenty of fake accounts. People using these accounts hide behind a fake avatar and incite debates or mock other users. Sometimes even the profile pictures are completely fabricated – they’re not real people. In this episode, the Truth or Fake team shows you how to spot these fake photos. [Ed. note: As of 2024, spammers can use AI to create profile pics that can’t be identified using this technique.]

Just like on any social media platform, there’s a lot of disinformation to be found on TikTok. But whereas Facebook and Twitter have flagged some accounts as potentially biased or untrustworthy, TikTok allows these videos to pop up in people’s feeds. This week, Truth or Fake takes a look at a video about Syria doing the rounds on TikTok.

It’s a heartwarming story: a Danish humanitarian worker, Anja Ringgren Loven, helped this starving child in 2016. The moment when she offered him water was captured on camera, and the picture went viral online.

Two pictures of a white, futuristic building in a forest went briefly viral in early April with the false claim that the building belonged to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

For this section, we will look at claims that come in form of images. The images could be distorted to misrepresent an issue. It could as well be an old image shared to depict a new reality but from a different context. Whichever form an image is presented on the internet you might be able to verify it with the aid of tools for image fact-checking such as are Google Reverse Image Search, Tin Eye, InVid, Yandex and so on.