118
votes
Did Russia release lions onto the streets to keep people in isolation?
No, they didn't
I remember the image (not the news headers) from a few years back when a film crew got into trouble for using a (tamed) lion in some filming in Johannesburg.
Here is the relevant ...
- 1,999
108
votes
Was Paul Manafort exonerated for the crimes he’s now charged with?
No, that's chronologically impossible, because some of the alleged crimes were committed less than 8 years ago.
The charges against Manafort are specified in this indictment. Many of the charges ...
- 7,565
105
votes
Did Russia release lions onto the streets to keep people in isolation?
This meme template is from breakyourownnews.com. In hindsight it's easy to spot the artifacting in the upper right-hand corner where the memer photoshopped out the site's watermark.
- 684
86
votes
What is the origin of this photo of an unexploded bomb?
The original photo appears to have been posted by Ukrainian soldier Andrew Zaharov on his Facebook photo album. as it predates the articles from any of the news sources below.
The initial hit for ...
- 18.1k
84
votes
Accepted
Is this photo of a jet firing at MH17 a fake?
Here's the BBC, one of the many news outlets reporting on this:
Several commentators pointed out that the "Malaysia" logo on the plane from the photograph was in the wrong place. Maksim ...
- 3,564
76
votes
Accepted
Did a Russian Orthodox priest sprinkle holy water on Russia's Central Bank's servers?
No.
The photo is from a 2013 Facebook post; the author states that the pictures were taken at the 2001 opening of the Russian server/payment company Rapida. Judging from the context, the servers/...
- 3,564
68
votes
Accepted
Did the CIA blow up a Siberian pipeline in 1982?
It seems unlikely.
While this claim was widely copied, it derived from a single source in the espionage community: Thomas C. Reed in At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War.
There was no ...
- 43k
62
votes
Did 17 U.S. intelligence agencies claim that Russia was behind the DNC hack?
There are two questions here:
Are there 17 US intelligence agencies?
Yes.
From the home page of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) (emphasis mine):
The U.S. Intelligence ...
- 11.2k
61
votes
Accepted
Did Russia's economy boom between 1999 and 2013?
Yep.
Picture is a bit strange in some details, like: "Inflation: $ 36.5%". Picture also leaves open quite a few important details: the exact figures used, based on what, corrected for inflation, and ...
- 43k
59
votes
Was Ukraine planning an attack in Donbas/Crimea prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine?
The falsehoods in Putin's speech are not so much outright factual lies as mischaracterisations.
He starts by referring to "the invasion of our historical lands", by which he appears to mean ...
- 54.2k
56
votes
Did the USA increase oil imports from Russia after the Ukraine invasion?
[...]is it true that USA is increasing it's crude oil imports from Russia year-over-year
No.
Before we get to the technical answer, first let's point out the lies by omission.
The US imports very ...
- 11.1k
53
votes
Accepted
Were videos of the Flydubai Flight 981 crash published before the official crash time?
When trying to ascertain why timestamps seem to disagree with each other, it is often important to start with an accurate (as possible) timeline of the events being reported on
It is also helpful to ...
- 9,012
52
votes
Accepted
Was Ukraine planning an attack in Donbas/Crimea prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine?
It's difficult to prove a negative of this kind. Zelensky said the plan to attack Crimea didn't exist. If the Kremlin has compelling evidence, it's up to them to present it. Actually, it seems they ...
- 49.3k
47
votes
Accepted
Did Hillary Clinton pay Russian officials 30 million dollars, through her campaign to get dirt on Trump?
If we listen a couple of seconds longer, Coulter specifies that it's about the "fusion GPS story", so it's about the Trump-Russia dossier.
Cost of the dossier
There are a number of claims out there: ...
tim♦
- 50.5k
44
votes
Accepted
Did Russia destroy all their (official) chemical weapons?
According to the Russian government, their country officially complied with the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention on September 27, 2017.
According to broadcasts from Russian State Media, ...
- 21.7k
44
votes
Accepted
Did Mueller indict a Russian company that didn't exist?
Concord Catering has existed, in some form, since at least 1996.
The website for Concord Catering is http://concord-catering.ru/.
WHOIS lookups, which track when website domains are registered, ...
- 21.7k
40
votes
Do these photos show Ukrainian children being trained to fight the Russian army?
This answer talks about two Ukrainian photojournalists, both called Sergei: Sergei Supinsky and Sergei Dolzhenko.
Both of them photographed the training event in Ukraine.
Supinsky's photos are ...
- 132k
39
votes
Accepted
Did Putin threaten to have traitors assassinated?
No, on the occasion in question Putin did not say that traitors would be killed. The quote in your question comes from a March 5, 2018 broadcast of BBC Newsnight. It is a concatenation of three ...
- 668
38
votes
Did a Turkish cargo ship get bombed in the Black Sea during the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
It was reported on Lloyd's so it's probably real. I don't have a subscription, so I can't access (all) the details.
Turkish bulker hit by bomb off Odessa. The Yasa Jupiter suffered no casualties. It ...
- 49.3k
37
votes
Did Russia destroy all their (official) chemical weapons?
TL;DR:
there is a chance they didn't destroy "all" of their weapons, since the specific weapons being discussed were outside the purvue of Chemical Weapons Convention; and destruction mentioned was ...
- 31.1k
31
votes
Accepted
Was very little or no new medication developed in the USSR?
Concerning the claim in the question headline: it might be difficult to properly define "very little", compare that to Western medicine. Then start an argument about what counts statistically as…
...
- 43k
27
votes
Accepted
Do the Crimean people prefer to be with Russia than with Ukraine?
It's not terribly clear to me what you're asking, but the 2017 survey by the German ZOiS (found via an RT story) has these highlighs (not all of them reproduced by RT):
The vast majority of the ...
- 49.3k
26
votes
Accepted
Has Trump exonerated Russia for the downing of flight MH-17?
That depends on your definition of "exonerated" (or the original Dutch term), but I wouldn't say so.
CNN quotes Trump as saying:
"They say it wasn't them," Trump said. "It may have been their ...
tim♦
- 50.5k
26
votes
Accepted
Is Kaspersky Lab a military unit?
While there's no proof, this seems like an incorrect assertion.
Based on the wording, this most likely seems like either a typo (or simply a rather grammatically-challenged typist); or simply two ...
- 31.1k
25
votes
Accepted
Was Russian Su-24 fighter able to disable electronics aboard USS Donald Cook and thus lead to personnel aboard the ship to resign?
I started researching this out of interest and found essentially two stories. You'll have to decide on your own which you want to believe, because there's too little information to say conclusively ...
- 1,492
25
votes
Accepted
Did NATO promise not to expand into Eastern and Central Europe?
Update March 2020:
It's five years later, and and eagle-eyed commenter pointed out that some documents on the matter have been declassified. Those seem to confirm my original conclusion: there were ...
- 3,564
25
votes
Can Russia's Poseidon nuclear underwater drone create a 500 meter tidal wave?
No multi-megaton nuclear warhead ever has been exploded underwater, so the best we can hope for in the way of sources is "what is the research on this".
Wikipedia: Underwater explosion -- ...
- 18.8k
22
votes
Was MH17's flight path rerouted?
No, it was flying its usual path, same as it was flying for months before the event. Here is the path of the same flight day before (a bit to the South):
Here is the same flight on 13th of June (a ...
- 3,759
22
votes
Did Putin threaten to have traitors assassinated?
The Independent has video excerpt where Putin is speaking (in Russian). There is an english translation overlaid in the audio that matches (almost) word for word. I do not speak Russian so I cannot ...
- 1,487
21
votes
Was the video about MH17 done the day before it crashed?
Timestamps are not a good source of information unless you are really sure where they come from. They are set using the system time of the computer creating the file, which might, for example, be set ...
- 3,564
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible