Russia And Ukraine

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,…

Have 80,000 Ukrainian troops totally blockaded Russian invasion forces fighting in Ukraine's semi-occupied eastern Donetsk region? No, that's not true: The post making the claim in its caption does not mention a blockade in an accompanying video. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Donetsk on December 20, 2022, and did not say his forces had surrounded the Russian invaders. Keyword searches…

Did Leonel Messi, an Argentinian football star who led his national team to the 2022 World Cup, swear at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Instagram, demanding that the Ukrainian leader "take [his] people and get out of Europe" and displaying a sign with profanity directed at Zelenskyy? No, that's not true. The image was digitally altered, and Messi did not…