Russia And Ukraine

Did Russian special forces, under the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin, destroy an "adrenochrome lab in Ukraine" as of January 23, 2023? No, that's not true: This claim comes from a website that regularly publishes fabricated content. Lead Stories has previously debunked content from this website that mentioned the "adrenochrome" conspiracy theory. The claim appeared in an article published…

By Evgenia Prodaeva Did the Russian media outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda (Young Communist League Truth) report that Ukrainians used dead Russian soldiers to assemble a battlefield image of assassinated Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera in honor of Bandera's January 1 birthday? No, that's not true: The page administrator of the Ukrainian Facebook page TFN, which regularly mocks mainstream Russian media, confirmed…

Did new graffiti negatively portraying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appear in London? No, that's not true: Based on analysis of open-source data, Lead Stories identified the location of the purported drawing as Lindt Home of Chocolate in Zurich, Switzerland. The Lindt Home of Chocolate spokesperson confirmed to Lead Stories that the posts in question showed the front of their building,…

Did an image of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy depicting him as a "locust" eating up budgets around the world appear in New York City's Central Park as of January 10, 2023? No, that's not true. A Lead Stories reporter found no traces of it and the NYC Parks Press Office denied seeing such a drawing. The claim appeared in a…

Did the BBC post a graph that showed a dramatic increase in the "Fortunes of Ukrainian politicians" between February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and December 2022, after the receipt of billions of dollars in U.S. assistance? No, that's not true: The BBC did not post this image, which has been widely distributed on social media.…

Did a YouTube video reveal that Elon Musk bought the search engine giant Google? No, that's not true: The video has a clickbait title, offers no details of a sale and appeared on a YouTube channel that admits its videos are fictional and have no connection to Musk. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has no record that Google, a…

Was "Russia's most advanced nuclear submarine' seen floating in Hawaii on December 26, 2022? No, that's not true: A social media post making the claim uses footage from a fictional TV show. The story appeared in a post published on Facebook on December 26, 2022. It contained a video of what appeared to show a beach crowd surprisingly observing an…

Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy bring a national flag with the "Nazi SS" symbol to Washington, D.C.? No, that's not true: The image circulating on social media was flipped to distort the original inscription. The claim appeared in a post published on Facebook on December 23, 2022. It contained an image showing U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President…

Did former German Chancellor Angela Merkel reveal in an interview plans by the United States and NATO for war in Ukraine with Russia? No, that's not true: Nowhere in her interview with the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, which was published in November 2022, does she talk about NATO plans for the war. The claim appeared in a Facebook…

Is there a "huge army of 2500000 Chechens preparing the end of Russia" or helping "get Putin out of the bottleneck" in Ukraine? No, that's not true: The self-contradictory claim that fails to mention a source cites an unrealistic number exceeding the entire population of the Chechen republic. The claim appeared in a post published on Facebook on December 24,…