Nearly two weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the flow of false or misleading information about the war has not stopped, and there are now some strange theories circulating online.
Some have begun to circulate claims that the war is a hoax, a media fabrication, or has been exaggerated by the West in terms of its scale.
The BBC has covered some of them.
False allegations about “crisis actors”
A video of a young woman and a young man applying fake blood to their faces has amassed millions of views across multiple platforms.
It has been shared as alleged evidence that the war in Ukraine is a hoax and the civilian victims are actually “crisis actors” – people hired to act out scenes from an attack.
But the video has nothing to do with the war. It was shot in 2020. on the set of the production of the Ukrainian series Contamin.
The male actor can be seen in the images of behind the scenes from the set posted on Twitter in December 2020.
Moving corpse
A video of a news reporter in front of corpses has gone viral on several major social networks and has been widely shared by pro-Kremlin accounts.
A few seconds into the clip, one of the body wraps begins to move, a man removes the shroud and is attended to by a photographer.
Social media posts claim the video was shot in Ukraine and proves the war is either a hoax or produced by "Western propaganda."
But the claims are false. The video clip is from a climate change protest in Vienna in early February, as reported by the Austrian newspaper OsterreichOrganized by climate activists Fridays for Future, the depiction of body bags was intended to highlight the danger of carbon emissions to human life.
The same video was distributed by conspiracy groups last month with false claims that it showed a Covid "crisis actor".
Allegations that they are fake wooden weapons
A screenshot of a Fox News broadcast showing two Ukrainian men holding wooden guns has gone viral.
It is often accompanied by false claims that the war in Ukraine is a hoax and the fact that they are not real weapons is evidence of this.
The footage actually dates from mid-February, before the start of the war.
It was taken during a training course offered by the far-right Azov battalion for civilian volunteers in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, ready to defend themselves and their communities in the event of a Russian invasion.
Steven Seagal is not fighting in Ukraine
A fake post – apparently sent by CNN's verified Twitter account – claims that American actor Steven Seagal, who is a dual American-Russian citizen, has been seen "among Russian special forces" near the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.
Along with ordinary users, the tweet has been picked up by influential accounts with large followings, including American podcast host Joe Rogan, who shared it with his 14 million Instagram followers.
(Full article at BBC)