Russia Ukraine War

Did Vladimir Putin proclaim that Russia will embrace "the guidance of Black Jesus"? No, that's not true: A video claiming to be an authentic fragment of a Sky News live broadcast of an address by Putin was digitally doctored. The original sound was replaced by an AI-generated voice reading an AI-generated text. The claim appeared in a video (archived here)…

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 U.S. Marines arrest U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland and her husband, Robert Kagan? No, that's not true: A Pentagon duty officer told Lead Stories that the information in this claim is "false." This claim also appears on a website that regularly publishes fabricated content. The claim appeared in an article (archived here) published by…

Did Tucker Carlson say in Russian that Biden was planning a "terrible crime" against Russia on March 7, 2024? No, that's not true: In the original video of Carlson taken from his social media account for a post on X, he does not mention President Joe Biden or a threat against Russia. The text in the post on X does…

Did Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say that Russia must win this war? Yes: Trudeau did misspeak at the end of a news conference in Poland. While speaking of how aid and military equipment would be supplied to Ukraine, he accidentally said "Russia must win this war." He immediately corrected himself and said, "Ukraine must win this war against Russia."…

Does a post on social media that claims the HAARP ionospheric heater is all over the world show an authentic photo of one? No, that's not true: It's a photo of a long-abandoned Soviet-era radar in Ukraine. Before the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion, the area, which had been evacuated due to high radiation levels after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, was…

Does a video clip shared by the official account of the State of Israel show 23,000 tons of tents and shelter equipment that were trucked into Gaza since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023? No, that's not true: This is a stock video clip that shows a refugee camp in Palanca, Moldova which was uploaded to iStock…

Did the European public broadcaster Euronews publish or air a report about French farmers attacking the Ukrainian embassy in Paris in early February 2024? No, that's not true: The video with the TV channel's logo couldn't be found on the Euronews website. The footage in question was originally recorded in a different French city. It predated the alleged date of…

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.…