Nato Ukraine

Did NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte publicly say that "if Trump surrenders Ukraine to Putin, he will personally expel the United States from the alliance"? No, that's not true: A NATO spokesperson described the claim as "bogus." The rumor was promoted by a Russian propaganda website and anonymous pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X…

Did South Korea announce it will deploy troops in Ukraine to engage in active combat against North Korean troops supporting Russia? No, that's not true: On October 30, 2024, neither U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin nor his South Korean counterpart Kim Yong-hyun said anything about it during a joint press conference about the potential engagement of North Korean troops…

Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy officially declare war on Russia's allies, Iran and North Korea? No, that's not true: Despite what some social media posts are saying, as of this writing neither Ukrainian government sites, the Iranian Embassy in Ukraine nor news media have mentioned any such declaration of war. In public speeches Zelenskyy has described Iran and North Korea's…

Did a photo of the attempted assassin of Donald Trump surface, showing that Thomas Matthew Crooks was transgender? No, that's not true: The person in the photo on social media is not Crooks. The photo appeared first on 4chan, posted by an anonymous user who replied to someone's questioning its truth that "spreading rumors is fun." A close-up photo of…

Did Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni say, "If Russia does not agree to the terms of the peace summit, we will force it to surrender"? No, that's not true: The comments attributed to her come from a falsified Russian translation of what she said in English at the Ukraine Peace Summit held in Switzerland in June 2024. While Meloni has…

Did China's Defense Ministry warn it would "intervene militarily" if the United States or NATO attacked Russia? No, that's not true: No credible evidence supports this claim. Additionally, there are no official statements or credible reports from the Chinese government or its Defense Ministry to support this assertion. Nor is there any report of such a statement in China Daily,…

Does a viral video on the X platform prove that "the Kamal Hospital in the Gaza Strip" was attacked by the Israeli forces "with a bulldozer" in 2023? No, that's not true: The footage predates the conflict. It is a least a decade old, and was posted as news coverage of an incident in Egypt. The claim appeared in a…

Did the BBC produce a video stating that Bellingcat proved Ukraine was selling NATO weapons to Hamas in the months leading up to the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel? No, that's not true: The BBC website does not contain such reporting, and investigative journalism group Bellingcat did not publish the purported investigation either. Both organizations publicly refuted the claim.…

Does this video show a salvo of rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip toward Israel in October 2023? No, that's not true: This video was posted over three years earlier on YouTube, on February 28, 2020, with a Russian-language caption naming the location as north Syria. Although Lead Stories could not verify that the footage shows rockets that…

Does a viral video prove that Ukraine now employs bulletproof vests specifically made for "pregnant women fighters"? No, that's not true: The post on social media misleads audiences about the new body armor's design -- it was made not for pregnant people, but for all female military personnel in order to take their anatomy into account. The caption on the…