Russian-Ukrainian War

Did Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, describe the Moscow concert hall attack on March 22, 2024, as "a lot of fun"? No, that's not true: The video purportedly showing an interview with Danilov is a deepfake, created from two other videos, with a synthetic voice track. Additionally, the website of a software company specializing…

Is this an authentic March, 2024 photo, showing flames billowing behind a President Vladimir Putin re-election billboard that reads "stability" in Russian? No, that's not true: The image was computer-generated, according to tools created to detect AI art. Earlier versions of posts with the picture contained the kinds of anomalies that are common to AI-generated images. The claim appeared in…

Did Tucker Carlson ask Vladimir Putin about the underlying reasons for his supposed belief that Christians can be gay? No, that's not true: A post on social media didn't show an authentic quote from that interview. Neither a recording of the interview nor its transcript included the quote, and the post's caption included hashtags with the word "meme" in them.…

Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy post a monetary reward for capturing the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson? No, that's not true: As of February 9, 2024, there were no credible reports about that. The claim shared on social media misleads about the discovery of Carlson's name on the Ukrainian website Myrotvorets (Peacekeeper). The claim appeared in a video (archived…

Does a viral video show Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dancing in a red suit? No, that's not true: The footage of a different person was altered to add Zelenskyy's face. The dance in question was performed by a man from the Russian city of Lipetsk. The story appeared in a post (archived here) published on Instagram on January 14, 2024.…

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 Russian President Vladimir Putin order "the destruction of a Kyiv pharmaceutical laboratory suspected of manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines" owned by Farmak, one of Ukraine's major companies selling medical products, in November 2023? No, that's not true: The company's warehouse near Kyiv had been burned down roughly a year and a half earlier. It happened during the early stages of the…

Is graffiti of a hanged Volodymyr Zelenskyy in The Hague, Netherlands, as of this writing? No, that's not true: The image was created by an art group that posts their work on Instagram purportely in random locations worldwide, but there is no evidence that the graffiti is where the group claims it is. The location shown in this image is…

Does a video on Mexico's Milenio Television channel show a Mexican cartel member carrying a U.S.-made Javelin anti-tank missile? No, that's not true: Raytheon Technologies, which makes the Javelin, told Lead Stories that the video shows another type of shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon. The claim appeared in a post on Twitter (archived here) by Mexican journalist Azucena Uresti on May 31,…

Does a video of a long convoy of cars show residents of Belgorod, Russia evacuating their homes after Russian paramilitary groups fighting for Ukraine crossed the Russian-Ukraine border on May 22, 2023, and attacked the Belgorod region? No, that's not true: Lead Stories compared the video footage with photos of Belgorod in Google's Street View and found that the cars…