Was the social media platform Truth Social blocked in Ukraine by the Ukrainian authorities? No, that's not true: Truth Social and the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs's spokesperson denied the claim. Both said that the social media platform was never made available in Ukraine. Lead Stories found no credible reports corroborating the viral rumor.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, published on February 20, 2025. It read:
ZELENSKY REPORTEDLY BLOCKS TRUTH SOCIAL ACROSS UKRAINE.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Feb 21 15:33:59 2025 UTC)
On February 21, 2025, a spokesperson for Truth Social told Lead Stories via email:
On behalf of the Company, 'Reports that Truth Social was blocked in Ukraine are false -- Truth Social has never been available in Ukraine.'
Earlier, on February 20, 2025, Heorhii Tykhyi (archived here), who is the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, refuted the claim on X (archived here), writing:
We have seen reports suggesting that access to the Truth Social network has been blocked in Ukraine. These reports are false.
Ukraine did not and could not block access because, unfortunately, the social network Truth Social has never made itself available to users in Ukraine.
Contrary to the claim, a search for Ukrainian keywords across Google News in the Ukrainian segment of the internet produced no relevant results:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Fri Feb 21 16:48:15 2025 UTC; the screenshot was automatically translated to English by Chrome)
Similar Google searches across Ukrainian government websites for the keywords seen here among the materials published between January 1 and February 21, 2025, showed zero matches:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Fri Feb 21 16:57:15 2025 UTC; the screenshot was automatically translated to English by Chrome)
A Google search across the corporate website of the company that owns Truth Social for the word "Ukraine" did not show any results:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Fri Feb 21 15:05:50 2025 UTC)
In March 2024, Detector Media (archived here), which is a Ukrainian nonprofit focusing on the analysis of disinformation and misinformation campaigns, published an article (archived here) summarizing the tests run by the newsroom to determine the accessibility of Truth Social in Ukraine:
The network operates without a VPN, but the registration process is complicated. To register a profile, you need to use an email address. However, it does not accept all domains. In particular, it was not possible to use ukr.net email addresses or temporary addresses such as ProtonMail. After entering the Gmail address, one receives a verification code. After that, the social network will ask you to enter your mobile phone number. It does not register users from Ukrainian numbers. Poland is not on the list of countries where the network works, but it accepted the Polish number and, using a Polish VPN, asked to enter the verification code from the SMS message.
As of this writing, Ukrainian users trying to access Truth Social from Ukraine saw an error message that suggested that it was the service itself that hasn't expanded to cover Ukraine, not the country's authorities blocking it:
(Source: Truth Social screenshot taken on Fri Feb 2115:24 2025 UTC)
Lead Stories staff tried to access Truth Social from Ukraine via VPNs and saw the same message.
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Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Ukraine are here.
