Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy flee Kyiv for a bunker in Poland? Is this evident because he posted a video filmed in front of a greenscreen with a scene of Kyiv added as a background? No, that is not a conclusive argument: There is no evidence that President Zelenskyy is in Poland, and he maintains that he is in Kyiv.…
By Uliana Malashenko and James Rosen Was U.S. citizen Brent Renaud, who was killed March 13 by Russian troops at a checkpoint near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, an American intelligence operative? No, it is not true. The claim was made with no evidence of Renaud's affiliation with the CIA or any other U.S. spy agencies. He was an award-winning…
Does a Facebook video show Russian soldiers using a Soviet-era rocket-propelled grenade in Ukraine during the 2022 invasion? No, that's not true: Two military experts contacted by Lead Stories in March 2022 said the uniforms worn in the video don't match those of Russians fighting in Ukraine. Nick Reynolds, a research analyst for land warfare at the U.K.'s Royal United…
Does a video show U.S. paratroopers in Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine? No, that's not true: The clips in the video are at least six years out of date, excerpted from videos identified as showing U.S. military paratrooper training exercises 5,000 miles from Ukraine. The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) on March 7, 2022.…
Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wear a T-shirt with an iron cross on his chest while addressing the U.S. Congress on March 16, 2022? No, that's not true: The shirt he wore had the symbol of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the left chest. Social media posts calling attention to the cross shape of this symbol tried to associate it…
Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publish a video telling Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their weapons? No, it's not true. The video is an obviously manipulated compilation of audio and video, called a deepfake. Zelenskyy's neck is grossly out of proportion as a side-by-side comparison clearly shows. There is no corroboration of Ukrainian capitulation reported by credible American, Ukrainian, or…
Did Russian President Vladimir Putin announce on March 16, 2022, that Russia, having invaded Ukraine, had capitulated? No, that is not true: No credible independent or official source has reported such a statement by the Russian president. The video uses video from Putin's earlier speech, altered using so-called "deepfake" technology, so that it appears Putin is saying the words. A…
Does a video posted to Facebook show footage of a Javelin missile targeting a Russian military vehicle as of March 2022? No, that's not true: This video shows footage from the military shooter video game Arma 3. Lead Stories has previously refuted similar claims concerning images from this particular video game being used to depict genuine international conflicts including Russia's…
Was there an air battle over Chukchi Sea between Russian MiG-31 fighters and a U.S. RC-135 aircraft on March 12, 2022, as claimed by a title on a video posted on Facebook? No, that's not true: This clickbait headline overdramatizes a true incident that happened on May 6, 2021. This was not a "battle" involving shooting down planes as suggested…
Does a video on social media show "leaked footage of heavy war between Russia vs. Ukraine" in 2022? No, that's not true: There is a compilation of Ukrainian footage in the post, but it's from August 2014. The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) on March 15, 2022, with the caption "Leaked Footage of Heavy WAR Between Russia…
Lead Stories is a U.S. based fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or
inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
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