Russia And Ukraine

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 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 nearly 100 food processing plants mysteriously explode in 2022? Did 10,000 cattle in Kansas die mysteriously too? No, neither of those claims are true: Lead Stories determined the food processing explosions claim was false -- because there were no explosions. There were some fires, as a previous Lead Stories fact check found, but they were not caused by arson.…

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 Elon Musk leak the news that Russian President Vladimir Putin had cancer surgery that failed? No, that's not true: This video and others like it offer no factual proof that Musk leaked such unconfirmed news to the media. Rumors about Putin's health remained just that -- unsubstantiated rumors -- at the time of writing. The claim appeared in a…

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…