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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

War & conflict fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about war & conflict. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

5,847 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYWar & conflict

Video depicting western media showing fake dead bodies of Ukrainian citizens

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The video at issue was shared as evidence that Western media were showing fake dead bodies of Ukrainian citizens. FACTLY reports that the footage instead came from a climate-change protest in Vienna, Austria, rather than Ukraine. The people lying on the ground were participating in a symbolic demonstration, not being presented as Ukrainian casualties. To trace the footage, the review says it used reverse image searches of screenshots from the circulating video. That search led to a full version on an Austrian news website, described as showing a demonstration in Vienna. The same footage was also posted by the official OE24.TV YouTube channel. Its title, translated in the review as “Vienna: Demo against climate policy,” and banners visible in the video—including one reading “Climate Protection Act Saves Lives”—support the identification of the event as a climate protest. The review further reports that OE24.TV reporter Marvin Bergauer identified the footage as a Fridays for Future protest in Vienna. According to the review, the people lying as corpses symbolically represented a study’s estimate that climate change could cause 49 deaths per day in Austria. Together, the location, original-media provenance, protest messaging and reported symbolism contradict the post’s characterization of the footage as scenes from Ukraine.

dpaWar & conflict

Hartverscheurende foto van Oekraïense soldaat.

Publisher’s rating: Het bericht klopt niet. Te zien is niet een Oekraïense soldaat tijdens de invasie van zijn land door Rusland, maar een Britse soldaat in 2019. Die werd ingezworen tot hetzelfde regiment als waarin zijn broer in 2008 in Afghanistan het leven had gelaten.

فکت‌نامهWar & conflict

فرانس۲۴: تانکی که یک خودروی غیرنظامی را زیر گرفت روسی نبوده است.

Publisher’s rating: چندین ویدیو از زیر گرفته شدن یک خودروی غیرنظامی توسط یک تانک در روز ۲۵ فوریه بیشتر از ۱۰ میلیون بار در توییتر دیده شد. اما بر خلاف آنچه برخی از کاربرها ادعا کرده‌اند، این یک تانک روسی نیست که به طور عمدی یک شهروند را زیر گرفته باشد، بلکه شواهد بسیاری نشان می‌دهد که تانک اوکراینی است.

FACTLYWar & conflict

The calculations show a similar pattern in the dates on which the two World Wars and the Russia-Ukraine war began

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post claimed that calculations based on the start dates of the First World War, Second World War, and Russia-Ukraine war revealed a similar numerical pattern. FACTLY checked both the dates and the arithmetic used in the post. It gives the dates as 28 July 1914, 1 September 1939, and 24 February 2022, respectively, noting that the First World War date refers to Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia and that Russia’s invasion began when Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” against Ukraine. The review also notes that tensions between Russia and Ukraine predated that announcement. The decisive issue is that the post applies two different addition methods. Under its first method—adding the two day digits together, the month digits together, and the year digits in pairs—all three dates produce 68. Under the second method, each digit is added individually; the two World War dates produce 32, but the Russia-Ukraine date produces 14. To make the last result fit the asserted pattern, the post treats the day 24 as a single number rather than adding its digits, even though its stated method calls for adding them separately. FACTLY therefore concludes that the apparent pattern depends on changing the calculation for the final date.

Fact CrescendoWar & conflict

សំណាង​ហើយ​ដែល​ទាហាន​អ៊ុយក្រែន​អត់​សម្លាប់​ចោល! នេះ​ជា​ពួក​ទាហាន​រុស្ស៊ី​ ដែលទាហាន​អ៊ុយក្រែន​ចាប់​បាន និង​ព្រម​ដោះ​លែង​ឱ្យ​ទៅ​ជួប​ជុំ​គ្រួសារ​របស់​ពួកគេ​វិញ

Publisher’s rating: Misleading

dpaWar & conflict

Deze Oekraïense vader neemt afscheid van zijn dochter om te gaan vechten tegen de Russen

Publisher’s rating: De video toont een inwoner van de separatistische volksrepubliek Donetsk, wiens familie geëvacueerd wordt. De beelden dateren ook van voor de Russische inval in Oekraïne.

The video shows a father saying goodbye to his daughter and wife as they board a bus. The claim attached to the footage was that he was going to fight Russia with the Ukrainian army. The review finds that the scene instead concerns a family being evacuated from Horlivka, in eastern Ukraine, before Russia’s full-scale invasion. It also says it is not clear whether the father later fought the Ukrainian army, as the separatist-area leader claimed; the footage does not establish that he was leaving to fight Russia. The review traces the video to a Twitter post from 21 February, three days before the invasion, which described an evacuation from Horlivka. The leader of the separatist areas around Luhansk and Donetsk had begun evacuating civilians to Russian territory on 18 February. Horlivka’s mayor also shared the video on Vkontakte on 21 February with the same explanation. This chronology and the posts’ stated context contradict the claim that the footage shows a Ukrainian father departing to fight the Russian army. The review describes checks of visible details in the footage: the bus displays the logo of “OOO Горсвет,” a company that operates in Horlivka, and “Premium Taxi” appears on a bus window. The review says the same lettering is visible on buses identified in an article as being used in the Horlivka evacuation. Taken together with the video’s earlier publication and the evacuation accounts, these details support the identification of the scene as an evacuation, not a departure to fight Russia.

FACTLYWar & conflict

Russian army has asked Indians to place Indian flags on their houses and vehicles and said that they will not harm Indians and evacuate Indians to safe places

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The claim combines two separate points: that the Russian army issued an instruction to put Indian flags on homes or vehicles, and that doing so would keep Indians safe and lead to their evacuation. FACTLY reports that it found no such announcement. Its review says it searched online for one and found no such announcement in the results; it also reports that the Embassy of India in Russia had not tweeted such an advisory. The review’s conclusion is that the claimed Russian instruction was not made. The flag instruction the review did identify came from India’s Embassy in Ukraine. In an advisory dated 25 February 2022, the embassy told Indian nationals to print an Indian flag and display it prominently on vehicles and buses while travelling. FACTLY says the advisory did not mention Russian forces evacuating Indians to safe places. This supports a narrower account: the flag guidance was issued by Indian officials for travel, not announced by the Russian army as a promise of protection or evacuation. The review also describes remarks by Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy to ANI. Reddy said Russia had promised not to take action against Indian students, and that students were asked to display flags while travelling towards the Ukraine border. Those remarks do not establish the broader claim about flags on houses or a Russian evacuation offer. The review further reports that on 1 March the Indian Embassy advised nationals to leave Kyiv urgently, without telling them to display flags on their homes. Together, these details show how separate travel guidance and statements about students’ safety could be recast as a Russian guarantee that the evidence in the review does not support.

dpaWar & conflict

Het nieuws probeert je te laten geloven dat de oorlog zo erg is, maar ze hebben niet eens echte wapens.

Publisher’s rating: Dit zijn foto’s van militaire oefeningen van Oekraïeners, voordat de oorlog uitbrak. Fox News beweert in de uitzending in kwestie ook niet dat de foto’s vechtende soldaten laat zien tijdens de oorlog. De reportage ging over hoe de Oekraïense bevolking zich heeft voorbereid op het conflict.

The claim grew out of images of Ukrainians holding imitation weapons that circulated in the Netherlands. Posts used the images to accuse media of fabricating or exaggerating the conflict. The review traced the images to a Fox News segment about Ukrainian preparations to fight, featuring Ukrainian parliamentarian Kira Rudik. It says the segment showed the images while Rudik spoke about the population being ready to fight, but did not present them as scenes of combat during the war. The report also did not clearly identify them as training images, a qualification relevant to how viewers might interpret them. (S1: “De berichten online verwijten de media dat ze nepnieuws verspreiden door deze Oekraïeners met nepwapens te laten zien.”; “In het segment spreekt Kira Rudik, een Oekraïens parlementslid, over hoe de Oekraïense bevolking klaar is om te vechten.”; “Ook in de Fox-reportage wordt niet geïnsinueerd dat de gebruikte foto’s tijdens de oorlog werden gemaakt of dat deze werkelijke oorlogssituaties laten zien. Ze benoemen daarentegen ook niet duidelijk dat het hier om trainingen gaat.”) The review investigated the images’ provenance using reverse image searches and compared them with image-library records and the Fox segment. It found that one image, showing two men with black imitation weapons, was photographed during a territorial-defence exercise in Kharkiv on 19 February 2022, before Russia’s invasion began on 24 February. The other image, of a man with a wooden weapon, showed volunteers at a military exercise near Kyiv; the review says the image-library description dated it to 5 February. These origins support the distinction between training and wartime combat, but do not establish that the weapons were genuine. (S1: “Door de foto via een reverse image search te zoeken, blijkt wel dat de foto nog wat ouder is.”; “De afbeelding staat in de beeldbank Alamy en werd gemaakt op 19 februari 2022.”; “De invasie Rusland in Oekraïne begon op donderdag 24 februari.”; “Deze foto laat ook vrijwilligers zien bij een militaire oefening, dit keer bij Kiev.”; “De foto staat ook in de beeldbank van Shutterstock en werd volgens de beschrijving gemaakt op 5 februari 2022.”) The review therefore found that using the images as proof that the media were making the war appear more severe was misleading: the images were from pre-invasion exercises, while the segment concerned preparations for the conflict rather than showing wartime fighting.

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaWar & conflict

යුක්‍රේන උප ජනාධිපතිවරයාගේ බිරිදත් රුසියාවට එරෙහිව සටන් බිමට ??

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim linked a photograph of a woman in military uniform to the wife of a Ukrainian vice president fighting Russia. Fact Crescendo Sri Lanka reports that the image was shared with a post asserting that the vice president’s wife had entered the battlefield, alongside a comparison to a Sri Lankan politician’s son. The review investigated the photograph and the claim about Ukraine’s political offices. The review says it used Google Reverse Image Search and traced the image to a Ukrainian female soldier taking part in a rehearsal for Ukraine’s 30th Independence Day celebrations in August 2021—not to a vice president’s wife entering the war. It reports finding the photograph in an Alamy image collection and another image of the same soldier in an iStock collection; both were credited to the same photographer. The review also checked Ukraine’s constitutional arrangements and concluded that Ukraine has no vice president. Taken together, its account identifies the woman in the image as a soldier photographed months before Russia’s 2022 invasion, and finds that the post misidentified both the photograph’s context and the claimed office-holder. The source’s conclusion is that the claim is false.