The images of civilians killed in Bucha have shocked the world. The Russian government and pro-Russian accounts claim they were staged and that some bodies were moving. Our DW fact check shows those claims are false.
A satellite image of Bucha in Ukraine appears to show bodies lying in the street nearly two weeks before the Russians left the town.
The image from 19 March, first reported by the New York Times and confirmed by the BBC, directly contradicts Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's claim that footage of bodies in Bucha, that has emerged in recent days, was "staged" after the Russians withdrew.
The images rebut Russia’s claim that the killing of civilians in Bucha, near Kyiv, took place after its soldiers had left town.
Open source evidence exists that appears to run counter to claims of elaborate fakes and staged productions, as well as calling into question the apparent timeline of events as depicted by Russia in recent days.
The Russian Ministry of Defense and other top Russian officials claimed that a video of a car driving through Ukraine showed two crisis actors playing the role of dead Ukrainians in a staged massacre. On Telegram and Twitter, they claimed that the video showed one person moving their arm, and another person seen in the car's mirror sitting up.
The video does not show a person raising an arm as the car drives by; it shows a mark floating across the car's windshield ' perhaps a drop of water or a speck of dirt.
The video does not show someone sitting up after the car drives by; it shows a stationary corpse through the lens of the car's passenger-side mirror, which has distorting effects.
Our ruling
The Russian Ministry of Defense said a video taken from a car driving through Bucha, Ukraine, shows a corpse "moving his arm," and then "in the rear view mirror the 'corpse' sits down."
Both claims misrepresent what the video in question shows.
The video shows a mark floating across the car's windshield ' perhaps a drop of water or a speck of dirt ' which Russia officials falsely portrayed as of a corpse "moving his arm."
Similarly, what Russian officials falsely claimed was a corpse sitting up was actually a dead person whose body appeared distorted due to the shape of the car's passenger-side mirror.
We rate this claim False.
Verdict: False
There is no evidence Bonov is the deputy commander of the Kyiv police.
These images of Ukrainian farmers seizing Russian military equipment with tractors have not been verified, and several of them were digitally altered using photos that predate the 2022 conflict.
As it happens, official United Nations data suggests that the 14,000 casualty figure that Putin has used does not only refer to civilians. During Russia's 2014-2021 military operations against Ukraine, 14,500 people died in the Donbas war. Of that 14,000, 3,404 were civilians, 4,400 were Ukrainian servicemen and 6,500 were Russian militants. The figure Putin operates with, is the total number of casualties incurred in the Donbas war by both sides.
Verdict: False
The video shows footage from an open-world military simulator video game. It does not depict an actual Russian helicopter being shot down.
Verdict: False
The woman pictured next to Zelenskyy is not the woman who died weeks earlier. There is no evidence the woman pictured in the post accompanying Zelenskyy has died.
