Top Statement Factchecks
Latest Statements
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Vladimir Putin
Russian president
“See, in civilian sectors we will soon catch up with our export of weapons. And the export of agricultural products rose to $16.2 billion.”
Read more...Russia’s president says the export of civilian products became a “driver of national economy” in 2016, overtaking military exports. But reports by Russia’s Federal Customs Service show a sharp drop in civilian exports and officials say military exports levels will likely remain consistent with 2015 figures. -
Vitaliy Churkin
Russian Ambassador to the UN
“He (a UN official) spoke of eastern Aleppo as though it were under continual attack from chemical weapons. I would ask him to produce a single fact about this.”
Read more...After a UN official’s presentation on the humanitarian impact of Syrian and Russian bombings on Aleppo, Russia’s envoy said the official spoke as though Aleppo was "under continual attack from chemical weapons.” But the official never mentioned chemical weapons. -
Russian Defense Ministry
“IS militants’ training camp in the Idlib Province was struck.”
Read more...The problem is that not even Russia’s own state media believe there are any IS fighters there -
Vladimir Putin
Russian President
“I would like to have such a propaganda machine here in Russia, but regrettably, this is not the case. We have not even global mass media outlets of the likes of CNN, BBC and others. We simply do not have this kind of capability yet.”
Read more...Is the Russian president correct when he says his nation lacks the global reach of worldwide media that the U.S. and UK have to promote Moscow’s propaganda? Polygraph.info talked to a few experts to find out. -
Sergei Lavrov
Russian Foreign Minister
“I will recall that the aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was associated with attacks on a huge number of civilian facilities… Thousands of those killed, several hundred children out of them..."
Read more...At the time, Yugoslav officials said much the same thing. However, a detailed accounted by Yugoslavia’s Foreign Ministry listed around 400 civilians killed. And in one of the most authoritative studies of the NATO action, Human Rights Watch estimated some 500 were killed. So Lavrov’s claim of “thousands” seems way off the mark. -
Russian Lt. General Viktor Poznikhir
First Deputy Head of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces
“The U.S. missile defense system is a threat to the free use of outer space by any state.”
Read more...A Russian senior general says that the United States has weapons that can interfere with other nations’ “free use” of outer space. That is true, but Russia - as well as China - have the same capability. -
Vladimir Putin
Russian President
"You’ve seen what’s happening: An immigrant raped a child in a certain European country. The court acquitted him based on two reasons: that he speaks the language of the receiving country poorly and did not understand that the boy -- and it was a boy -- did not consent."
Read more...But Putin's remarks to his council on interethnic relations contradict the facts of the actual case. The attacker’s conviction was only partially annulled, and he remains in custody pending a retrial in the case. Russian media reporting of the case as an acquittal, and Putin's reference to it, is an example of "pro-Kremlin disinformation," according to an EU task force. -
Vladimir Putin
Russian President
“It is operating normally, paying wages and making a profit.”
Read more...Russia’s president says that a Ukrainian-owned sweet factory in the southern Russian city of Lipetsk, seized in 2014, is showing a profit. But Russian financial records found by Polygraph.info show that the factory has been operating at a loss for the last two years. -
Vladimir Putin
Russian President
“We don’t plan to create, as I’ve said many times before, state capitalism. We’re going to continue with real privatization, but of course not during a depressed market.”
Read more...However, data, both from Russia and abroad, indicate otherwise. In fact, the share of annual GDP generated by the government and state-run enterprises has risen from 35 percent in 2005 to 70 percent in 2015. The International Monetary Fund said much the same in 2013, finding state-run firms and the government were contributing 71 percent to GDP. -
Maria Zakharova
spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry
“An expert analysis of the photos of the Haas village in Syria revealed that there had been no air strike at the local school and that there had been no casualties. The photos are the products of computer graphics, and the killed schoolchildren are a horrible fantasy of ‘activists’ from Al-Jazeera and The Independent.”
Read more...Verifiable video evidence from multiple sources demonstrates that military jets, either Russian or Syrian, did indeed bomb a school in the village, reportedly killing least 35 people, 22 of them children.