Fact Checks
Friday 7 June 2024
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“What Western Media Isn’t Telling You About North Korea’s Trash Balloon Campaign.”
Sputnik rehashes North Korean talking points reported in Western media, while missing the regime insecurity that’s driving Pyongyang’s trash balloon campaign. -
“[T]he parliament and the Rada Speaker remain the only legitimate power [in Ukraine].”
Ukrainian law does not give the parliament, Verkhovna Rada, the authority to lift martial law, only the president can issue a decree to revoke it. But the law legally bars the president from lifting martial law while Ukraine is under attack that threatens its independence and territorial integrity. -
“Since a vaccine is already developed and stockpiled for a bird flu strain that hasn’t even evolved yet, the economic and societal pressure to unleash a new pandemic is imminent.”
There is no vaccine for the latest identified strain of bird flu, and the routine practice of stockpiling vaccines is no indication of “planning a manmade pandemic.” -
"Nothing extraordinary – foreign (US) agents are leading the demonstrations abroad against the law on foreign agents."
In Georgia, leaders of political opposition and the president are leading protests against the foreign agent bill, which critics say threatens the nation’s EU membership and could become a tool of political oppression in the hands of the governing party. -
"Russian Ambassador to Mozambique Surikov suddenly died in Maputo. Preliminary assumption - stroke. "
At the time of the Russian foreign ministry’s statement, the ambassador’s body was still in the hospital morgue in Mozambique’s capital Maputo with Russian embassy officials prohibiting medics from examining the body and refusing the police investigation. -
"The Philippines illegally occupied China's Zhongye Dao (and has carried out frequent activities in the adjacent waters of Zhongye Dao. If any environmental degradation appears in those waters, it is the Philippines who needs to reflect on its behavior, instead of wrongly accusing China."
The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague did not recognize China’s claim over the Spratly Islands. China is the main polluter of the South China Sea where Beijing’s island-building, dredging, and overfishing causes severe environmental damage. -
“Our cooperation in world affairs is one of the main stabilizing factors on the international stage. Together, we defend the principles of fairness and the democratic world order based on the multipolar realities and international law.”
Wanted for war crimes, Putin relies on China to wage Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine and undermine the rules-based global order. -
’’American foreign policy sees the Uranium in Niger… the oil in Escravos and the lithium in Kogi as valuable assets… A U.S. military base anywhere in Africa serves EXACTLY the same purpose that the old colonial military bases did - to protect the flow of African resources, and not the lives of African people which America considers to be less than worthless.”
China, France, and Spain are the largest extractors of uranium in Niger. China is also the single largest harvester of Nigeria’s lithium. A Nigerian subsidiary of a U.S. private firm Chevron is involved in that country’s oil production. -
“…according to statistics, the vast majority of computer attacks in the world occur from the territory of the United States.”
Antonov manipulated statistical data omitting key distinctions that point to Russia as the world’s largest sponsor of political cybercrime. -
“The U.S. administration, which had kept itself aloof from the delivery of long-range missiles, saying that it did not encourage Ukraine's strike on the Russian mainland, has betrayed more clearly its true colors as a harasser of peace, aggravating war by providing Ukraine with such missiles. This time it has adopted such a mean policy as offering even long-range missiles for attacking the Russian territory to their lackeys.”
Washington has made clear that Kyiv cannot use long-range missiles to strike within Russian territory. U.S. said Russia’s targeting and killing of at least 14 civilians in Ukraine with North Korea-supplied long-range missiles motivated Biden’s decision to help Ukraine’s defense by sending ATACMS. -
“HRW alleges that the Burkinabe army deliberately massacred 223 civilians including more than fifty children in the villages of Nodin and Soro on February 24... The government of Burkina Faso firmly rejects such baseless accusations. The media campaign around these accusations clearly demonstrates the intention of its authors, which is to discredit our fighting forces engaged on the frontline...”
Witnesses and survivor accounts, photographs, and videos as well as satellite images place Burkina Faso troops at the scene of the attack reported by Human Rights Watch, an international watchdog with a decades-long history of documenting abuses. -
U.S. officials say that the United States is continuing talks with Nigerien officials, has not withdrawn any of U.S. military personnel from Niger and does not rule out a continued U.S. military presence there.