The war in Ukraine is real and ongoing, despite nonsense social media posts
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- The war in Ukraine is real and continuing, despite social media posts claiming otherwise.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died because of the war in Ukraine, according to estimates, and U.S. officials expect the conflict there to last through at least this year.
A recent Facebook post claims otherwise.
“There is no war in Ukraine,” says a man in the video shared in a June 6 post. “It’s completely a lie. … it’s all fake, every freaking bit of it is.”
This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
That’s because it trafficks in misinformation about the war that we’ve encountered before. Previous posts have falsely claimed that various photos are evidence the war is fake, that video clips prove it’s staged, that it’s scripted. None of that was accurate, and neither is the claim that there’s no war in Ukraine.
It defies more than a year of news coverage from reporters with media outlets from around the world giving dispatches from Ukraine, describing the front lines, the lives of civilians and more.
We rate this post Pants on Fire!
Our Sources
Facebook post, June 6, 2023
Reuters, Ukraine war, already with up to 354,000 casualties, likely to last past 2023 - U.S. documents, April 12, 2023
The Washington Post, The death toll in Ukraine is huge. It may still be far behind Tigray, May 3, 2023
Evening Standard, On the ground in Kyiv — 8 of the best Ukraine correspondents to follow now, Feb. 25, 2022
PolitiFact, No, this photo of Ukrainians training for combat doesn’t prove the war is fake, May 19, 2022
PolitiFact, No, this photo of intact windows in Bucha doesn’t prove the war in Ukraine is a hoax, April 27, 2022
PolitiFact, Evidence of Russia’s war in Ukraine is plentiful and proves it is not ‘staged,’ March 4, 2022
PolitiFact, Video clips mischaracterized as showing fake Ukraine war footage, Oct. 26, 2022
PolitiFact, The war in Ukraine isn’t ‘fake,’ and these photos don’t prove that it is, Feb. 27, 2023
