In Twitter , false and misleading posts about the ukraine war continue to circulate.These posts often originate from verified accounts that pay to promote their content to other users.
One example of such misleading posts involves the recent riots in France. However, last week, a viral post caught attention, focusing on US military aid to Ukraine. The post included a screenshot that appeared to be from a news website and featured an image of two rifles. The headline read, “Unknown individuals fire upon French police with American rifles that may have originated from Ukraine.”
Multiple Twitter accounts with paid subscriptions and verified status shared this post, garnering over a million views. Upon investigation by BBC Verify, it was traced back to pro-Kremlin channels on the Telegram messaging app. Notably, the image used in the post originated from a Russian military blog in 2012, related to a shooting competition near Moscow.
Additionally, BBC search for online articles with the specified headline and image yielded no results. Also, there is no evidence indicating that the recent unrest in France has involved the utilization of weapons provided by the US to Ukraine.. It is important to note that several Twitter accounts with verified status have recently endorsed a claim that Russia has discovered “baby factories” in Ukraine.
This claim alleges that individuals are “factory farming” children between the ages of two and seven, involving them in child sex brothels or harvesting and selling their organs in the West. Moreover, these accounts have a history of promoting false and misleading stories, including anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and baseless claims about the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.
The Russian government and Kremlin-controlled media have a track record of propagating unverified allegations about illegal organ harvesting in Ukraine.
