Were people in the Crimean peninsula stuck in traffic on the Kerch bridge after a fuel depot blast in the Russian-occupied city of Sevastopol on April 29, 2023? No, that's not true. The footage recently circulated on social media is from October 2022. The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on April 30, 2023, by the…

Is the United States preparing for a nuclear war in Europe by deploying a guided-missile submarine to the Middle East? No, that's not true: There is no evidence nor has it been reported that the United States is currently preparing for a nuclear war in Europe or elsewhere. The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok by…

Did the British weekly New European publish a special issue cover with a cartoon of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sitting on the lap of Dalai Lama and saying: "I'll suck it if you pay me"? No, that's not true: The illustration has not appeared in any issue of The New European. On April 18, 2023, the cover in English with…

Does this photo show the son of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Nikolai Peskov taking the military oath? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found the person taking the oath in the photo is not Nikolai Peskov, also known as Nikolai Choles. It is the son of the fifth president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, Oleksii Poroshenko. On April 23, 2023, this…

Does a video circulating on social media show Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the hands of enemy forces, about to be executed? No, that's not true: The person in the video is an actor impersonating Zelenskyy in a YouTube miniseries, meant to be satirical, mocking the Ukrainian president. The claim appeared in a video (archived here) posted on TikTok by the account…

Did Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a video, say the Caspian Sea was the territory of Belarus and promise to find all Belarusians who launched their rockets from the shores of the Caspian Sea? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found this video has been manipulated. This claim was published by different TikTok accounts in Russian. On April 7, 2023,…

Did Polish tv show a map in 2023 'dividing' Ukraine among neighbor states? No, that's not true: a recent news report on national Polish tv did not show such a map. The clip is taken from a old news report aired on Polish public television in 2014. It showed a Russian politician's old proposal to divide Ukraine, shrinking its territory…

Have crocodiles turned up in the Caspian Sea, the world's largest landlocked body of water? No, that's not true: The video on TikTok that makes this claim uses footage of a crocodile filmed in Australia. Crocodiles cannot survive the relatively cool temperatures of the Caspian Sea, bordered by the non-tropical countries of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan. The claim…

Did the Ukrainian Parliament submit a bill banning filming in cemeteries? No, that's not true: The screenshot distributed under the masthead of the National News Agency of Ukraine (Ukrinform) is fabricated. Lead Stories found no such information on Ukrinform's official website (archived here), and no such bill has been registered on the Ukrainian Parliament's website. This claim has been published…

Did a decommissioned NASA spacecraft crash in Kyiv, Ukraine? No, that's not true: The flash seen in Kyiv had nothing to do with the spacecraft, which did enter the Earth's atmosphere but nowhere near Ukraine. The claim that a NASA satellite crashed in Kyiv appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok by a user named jony.ori on April 19,…