War

Was there a drug lab bust at a NATO nuclear base in Belgium? No, that's not true: The Belgium defense press office told Lead Stories that the drug lab bust was a few kilometers away from the Kleine-Brogel Air Base, a NATO facility. The Federation of American Scientists estimates there are 10 to 20 nuclear weapons stored at the base.…

Does this video prove the United States is sending fighter jets to help Ukraine fight Russia? No, that's not true: U.S. Air Force Capt. M. Ryan Goss said the video doesn't show U.S. fighter jets, and the video was published on an Egyptian news website in 2016. The claim appeared in a Facebook video on June 30, 2022, under the…

Was Moscow blown up by rockets? No, that's not true: Video posted in support of the claim actually shows footage from a Russian airstrike on a mall in central Ukraine. The claim appeared in a Facebook post on June 28, 2022. It includes a roughly 12-minute video and a caption that reads: KREMLIN Electricity is Under Attack! PUTIN Panics When…

Did a Russian missile do a complete U-turn and return to strike the troops who fired it? No, that's not true: This missile launch was a failure, but the missile did not return precisely to the site of its launch. It exploded in a field nearby. The angle of one video makes it appear that the missile doubled back to…

Is this video of the Russian warship, Moskva -- the English-letter spelling of the Russian term for Moscow -- sinking in April 2022 after an ammunition explosion while being towed back to Sevastopol, a major maritime port in the Black Sea? No, that's not true: This video offers no evidence that it is. It's actually a video of the USS…

Does an image of a Russian passport shared on social media in spring 2022 prove that Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy is a secret Russian citizen? No, that's not true. Analysis of similar images shows that forged passport scans are easy to create with free software if one has a passport-style photograph of a person. Zelenskyy's image in the social media…

Does a picture of a grieving girl hugging a tombstone stem from the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict? No, that's not true. The photograph first appeared on a Georgian-language website in January 2019. The original image contained a Georgian-language inscription, but it was cut out from the later versions of the picture, adding more ambiguity about where the photograph was taken. The…

Did NASA hand over control of the International Space Station (ISS) to Russia after a Russian official threatened to crash it into Earth? No, that's not true: A NASA spokesperson told Lead Stories that a long-established ceremonial change of command "does not represent overall control of ISS. That remains unchanged with the crew." There was no threat to "crash it…

Is it true that Russia destroyed a NATO base in the Ukrainian city of Ochakiv? No, it's not true. Not a single NATO facility has ever existed in Ukraine. The Ochakiv naval base belongs to Ukraine, not NATO. While it was reported that Russians shelled the base on more than one occasion, a video of its purported destruction contains unrelated…

Did U.S. Air Force F-35s carry out an air raid in the Black Sea destroying Russian forces in June 2022? No, that's not true: The United States, while offering billions of dollars in military aid, equipment and training to Ukrainian forces since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has not been involved in any direct military operations against Russian…

Did the Danish navy open fire as Russian warships entered territorial waters on June 17, 2022? No, that's not true: According to a statement from Denmark's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the situation was handled diplomatically, not militarily. The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on YouTube on June 17, 2022, under the title "Attack on Russian warships! The…

Did a Russian airplane get hit with a missile, killing 50 people, in 2022? No, that's not true: A fatal plane incident happened on May 6, 2019, before the 2022 Russian-Ukrainian war. Forty-one people died as a passenger plane crash-landed at a Moscow airport. Surviving passengers suggested that the crash happened because of a lightning strike that hit the plane.…

Is it true that at the beginning of June 2022 Poland annexed Ukraine? No that's not true. Such posts on social networks began to appear after the publication of a press release from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, in which the alleged state contract for the construction in Poland of a backup data processing center of the Ukrainian tax service…

Did the city of Miami sponsor a gun buyback program in support of Ukraine? Yes, that's true: The June 18, 2022, event is being used to get guns off the street and also to support Ukraine. Donations are going to the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), according to the city's website. The claim appeared in an Instagram post on…

By Uliana Malashenko Is it true that a "classified" Azov document proves that over two-thirds of the Mariupol population support Russia? No, that's not true: The link to the English-language article by the state-controlled Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) did not contain any evidence to support the claim. Multiple discrepancies cast doubts on the authenticity of the shared document allegedly…

Does a photograph in a June 2022 news story show a destroyed Russian landing craft? No, that's not true: The photo shows a vessel that was hit by a missile off the coast of Ukraine back in February 2022. The photograph appeared in a YouTube post (archived here) published by Strong News on June 3, 2022. Titled "Ukrainian Forces Destroyed…

By Uliana Malashenko Is it true that Finland transferred tanks to the Russian border at the beginning of May 2022? No, it's not true: A video showing trains carrying military equipment captured the Finnish army heading to a scheduled military exercise in the opposite direction. One of the first English-language posts claiming that the Finnish army moved dangerously close to…

By Uliana Malashenko Is it true that Warsaw is going to send troops to the western parts of Ukraine to repossess the lands Poland used to own in the distant past? No, it's not true. Claims about the allegedly planned Polish invasion of Ukraine started to spread on social media on April 28, 2022, following the statement made by Sergei…

Did the United Kingdom send warships to the Black Sea to break Russia's grain blockade in Ukraine during the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict? No, that's not true: Although there have been reports that such a move was supported by the United Kingdom in principle, there is no trustworthy independent reporting that the Royal Navy had, by May 27, 2022, sent warships…

By Uliana Malashenko Is it true that the Ukrainian president's daughter, Oleksandra Zelenska, called her father, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a "Nazi" and a "murderer"? No, it's not true: The image of a crying woman that circulated on social media in spring 2022 is a screenshot from a 5-year-old video of another Russian-speaking woman who was caught on camera crying about not…