Tag: fake news

How Ukraine’s ‘Ghost of Kyiv’ legendary pilot was born

Ukraine’s fighter pilots are vastly outnumbered by the Russians, and have become legendary – thanks in part to the story of an alleged flying ace called the “Ghost of Kyiv”.

This hero is said to have downed as many as 40 enemy planes – an incredible feat in an arena where Russia controls the skies.

But now the Ukraine Air Force Command has warned on Facebook that the “Ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend whose character was created by Ukrainians!”.

“We ask the Ukrainian community not to neglect the basic rules of information hygiene,” the message said, urging people to “check the sources of information, before spreading it”.

Earlier reports had named the ace as Major Stepan Tarabalka, 29. The authorities confirmed that he was killed in combat on 13 March and honoured with a Hero of Ukraine medal posthumously.

Now, the air force stresses that “Tarabalka is not ‘Ghost of Kiev’, and he did not hit 40 planes”.

It describes the “Ghost of Kyiv” as “a collective image of pilots of the Air Force’s 40th tactical aviation brigade, who defend the sky over the capital”, rather than a single man’s combat record.

For weeks, Ukrainians did not have a name to go with the “Ghost of Kyiv” – but that did not stop the story going viral on social media.

It was used as a marketing brand by a Ukrainian model aircraft manufacturer, while Ukrainian Iryna Kostyrenko showed off a military badge inspired by the legend.

And the defence ministry tweeted a video celebrating Tarabalka’s heroism.

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CIA Admits Feeding Americans False Info About Ukraine

Last week an extraordinary article appeared in, of all places, NBC News, reporting that the US intelligence community is knowingly feeding information it does not believe accurate to the US mainstream media for the American audience to consume.

In other words, the article reports that the US “deep state” admits to being actively engaged in lying to the American people in the hopes that it can manipulate public opinion

According to the NBC News article, “multiple US officials acknowledged that the US has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect…”

Readers will recall the shocking headlines that Russia was prepared to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, that China would be providing military equipment to Russia, that Russian President Putin was being fed misinformation by his advisors, and more.

All of these were churned out by the CIA to be repeated in the American media even though they were known to be false. It was all about, as one intelligence officer said in the article, “trying to get inside Putin’s head.”

That may have been the goal, but what the CIA actually did was get inside America’s head with false information meant to shape public perception of the conflict. They lied to propagandize us in favor of the Biden Administration’s narrative.

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Viral ‘Russian Mobile Crematorium’ Tweet is From an 8-Year-Old YouTube Video

A viral tweet that remains unchecked by “fact checkers” claims to show a Russian-operated ‘mobile crematorium’ in Mariupol, but the image is taken from an 8-year-old YouTube video.

Whoops.

The tweet was posted by news outlet NEXTA, which boasts nearly a million followers on Twitter. The tweet has received over 7,000 retweets and almost 11,000 likes.

“Mobile crematoria in #Mariupol,” states the tweet.

“Mayor of Mariupol Vadim Boychenko said today that #Russian mobile crematoria have started operating in the city.”

“According to him, tens of thousands of people could have died in Mariupol and the cremation, “covering up the traces of crimes”.

Except a simple reverse image search reveals the ‘mobile crematorium’ to be a screenshot from an 8-year-old YouTube video.

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Corporate media spreads hoax that Russian cosmonauts wore yellow suits to ‘support Ukraine’

When photos began to circulate online of Russian cosmonauts boarding the International Space Station (ISS), media outlets online quickly spread the hoax that the group had deliberately chosen to wear yellow and blue flight suits in solidarity with Ukraine by wearing the country’s national colors.

The connection between the color of the attire and the conflict in Ukraine spread to outlets like the BBC, Bloomberg Quicktake, The Times, and NPR.

But what many had hoped was an act of heroic defiance against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime turned out to be an unrelated coincidence.  

Veteran cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, the mission commander for the Russian team aboard the ISS, quickly debunked the story, Reuters reported. In a news conference from the space station, he said the suits had been created six months ago, predating Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine. Moreover, Artemyev expressed solidarity with his country, voicing no sympathy for Ukraine.

“Color is just color,” Artemyev said. “It has nothing to do with Ukraine. In these days, even though we are in space, we are together with our president and people!”

He explained that the team had selected its colors based off of the team’s common alma mater—a college whose primary colors also used yellow and blue. “Every crew picks a color that looks different. It was our turn to pick a color,” he said.

“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’s press service said on its Telegram channel. “To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”

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Vimeo bans “fake news” that creates “a serious risk of material harm”

Video sharing platform Vimeo has updated its terms of service to ban “fake news, deepfakes, propaganda, or unproven or debunked conspiracy theories” that create “a serious risk of material harm to a person, group, or the general public.”

Vimeo’s previous terms banned “conspiracy-related content where the underlying conspiracy theory makes claims that…a real-world tragedy did not occur” but didn’t reference fake news, deepfakes, propaganda, or unproven or debunked conspiracy theories.

These new terms also ban “false claims that a violent crime or catastrophe has occurred.”

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Russia says it will not strand American astronaut in space despite media reports

Last week, a flurry of news reports worryingly claimed that Russia was threatening to strand an American astronaut on the International Space Station in direct response to sanctions placed on the country as it continues to invade neighboring Ukraine. But Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos is trying to put those fears to rest, saying that it will bring home the astronaut as planned.

The NASA astronaut in question is Mark Vande Hei, who has been living on the International Space Station since April 2021. Vande Hei launched to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan, along with two cosmonauts. While living on the ISS, his stay was extended to a full year, and he is slated to return home in another Soyuz capsule on March 30th. When he returns home, he’ll have the record for longest continuous spaceflight by an American astronaut, at around 353 days.

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White House Says It’s Working With Poland To Get Jets To Ukraine – Warsaw Responds: “Fake News”

Ukraine’s President Zelensky has been urging the United States and NATO countries that his military desperately needs more fighter jets to take on the Russian invasion force, on Friday telling US lawmakers in a Zoom call “close the skies or give us planes” – according to a Congressional leader present for the address.

Apparently the Biden administration is busy working on just that, also at a moment Congress is still prepping a whopping $10 billion military and humanitarian aide package for Ukraine. The new aircraft deal would involve transferring Russian-made warplanes to Kiev from neighboring Poland, according to a new report in FT. 

To expedite the deal – given the battlefield situation and Ukraine’s ability to defend itself depends largely on the speediness of getting sufficient arms – Washington would quickly replace Warsaw’s MiG-29 jets with F-16 fighters.

However, a White House official was quoted in the FT report as admitting the deal could be held up by “a number of challenging practical questions, including how the planes could actually be transferred from Poland to Ukraine.”

Further there’s the question of recent threat’s by Vladimir Putin himself against any country seeking to pour more weapons into the hands of the Ukrainian forces. Putin days ago issued a veiled threat of war against any country supplying weapons that are use to kill Russian soldiers, saying those outside nations would “bear the responsibility”. 

A White House spokesperson had confirmed to FT that “We are also working on the capabilities we could provide to backfill Poland if it decided to transfer planes to Ukraine.” And previously Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US is “very actively” looking at resupplying Poland if it can quickly transfer its own Russian-made aircraft to Ukraine. 

“We are looking actively now at the question of airplanes that Poland may provide to Ukraine and looking at how we might be able to backfill should Poland decide to supply those planes,” Blinken said in Moldova, while on a trip that highlighted the growing refugee crisis from the war.

Crucially, there was this statement from an unnamed Polish official given to FT: “I can’t speak to a timeline but I can just say we’re looking at it very, very actively.” The official said further, “Poland is not in a state of war with Russia, but it is not an impartial country, because it supports Ukraine as the victim of aggression. It considers, however, that all military matters must be a decision of Nato as a whole.”

On Saturday, perhaps nervous about coming into Russia’s crosshairs amid the flurry of reporting, Poland’s government batted down the reports as “fake news” – saying there’s been no transfer of its aircraft to Ukraine nor does it intend to…

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