Russia and Ukraine
Claims about the war in Ukraine and Russian foreign policy.
37 checked claim occurrences · 4 sources · 5 attributed speakers
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Putin was called the new Hitler
Multiple Western politicians and media figures have explicitly compared Vladimir Putin to Hitler, particularly after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
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Operation Unthinkable involved wanting to use the Nazis to invade Russia, and Churchill was behind it
Churchill did commission Operation Unthinkable in May 1945, and the plan did include rearming up to 100,000–700,000 former Wehrmacht (German) soldiers to fight alongside Anglo-American forces against the Soviet Union. However, calling them 'Nazis' conflates Wehrmacht soldiers with the Nazi party specifically; the plan was also a never-implemented contingency, not an active operation. The counterclaim in the transcript that 'Churchill was never working with the Germans to invade Russia' is itself false or highly misleading, as the plan explicitly envisioned rearmed German troops.
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One plan assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany to impose the will of the United States and the British Empire upon Russia.
Multiple sources confirm exactly this language: the plan called for a surprise attack on Soviet forces in Germany to 'impose the will of the United States and British Empire upon Russia.'
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In February 2022, Vladimir Putin's tanks invaded Ukraine.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, with armoured columns including tanks crossing the border from multiple directions. This is extensively documented by Britannica, CNBC, and other sources.
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Ukraine is a pretty corrupt country by EU standards and by World Bank standards.
Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Ukraine 104th out of 182 countries with a score of 36/100, and one source notes it is the third most corrupt country in Europe (after Russia and Belarus) — well below EU member states. World Bank governance indicators similarly reflect low control-of-corruption scores for Ukraine, supporting the claim.
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Zelensky said he only got 70 billion dollars of the aid sent to Ukraine
Zelensky did say roughly $70 billion in weapons/military aid was received, but his fuller statement distinguished between military hardware (~$70-75B) and total aid received (~$75-76B), contrasted with the larger figures of $177-200B cited by US officials that include broader programming. The transcript's framing ('only got 70 billion') omits nuance about categories of aid.
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The US has spent closer to 170 billion dollars on Ukraine
Figures vary by methodology and date: the US allocated $182.8B through December 2024 (USAFacts), disbursed $83.4B, and the Kiel Institute puts aid directly supporting Ukraine at ~$127B. '170 billion' is not a well-supported single figure, though total Congressional allocations are in that range.
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The speaker wrote the New York Post cover the next day after Trump's statements, featuring a big picture of Vladimir Putin with the headline 'this is a dictator'
The New York Post did publish a front-page cover with a large photo of Putin and the headline 'Mr. President: Putin is THE dictator' in response to Trump's posts, but it was published on February 21, 2025 — two days after Trump's February 19 posts, not the next day. The cover was written by columnist Douglas Murray.
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Scott Horton wrote a book called 'Provoked' about the history leading up to the war in Ukraine, taking the reader from the collapse of the Soviet Union up to the war
Scott Horton's book 'Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine' (2024) does cover the history from President H.W. Bush's era (post-Soviet collapse) through to the Ukraine war, consistent with the speaker's description.
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Putin tried to invade Georgia and seized South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008
Russia waged war against Georgia in August 2008 and subsequently occupied and formally recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, effectively seizing both territories from Georgian control.
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Putin's actions in February 2022 provoked two new countries (Finland and Sweden) to join NATO and his borders with NATO have grown
Finland and Sweden both applied to join NATO in May 2022 explicitly due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and Finland's accession alone more than doubled NATO's pre-existing land border with Russia (adding ~830 miles).
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The 2008 war in Georgia came 2 or 3 months after the Bucharest summit where NATO announced that Georgia and Ukraine would be entering NATO
The Bucharest summit concluded on April 4, 2008, and the Russo-Georgian War began on August 8, 2008 — approximately 4.2 months (126 days) later, not 2 or 3 months. Additionally, NATO did not announce Georgia and Ukraine would be 'entering' NATO; it stated they 'will become members' while denying them the Membership Action Plan at that time.
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Joining NATO was very unpopular in Ukraine around 2006
Multiple polling analyses confirm that before 2014, NATO membership had minority support in Ukraine, with public opinion especially divided between western and eastern regions; a majority of Ukrainians in that period did not favour NATO accession.
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George Kennan was the founder of the containment strategy and warned that NATO expansion would inevitably lead to conflict with Russia, predicting that when Russia responds everyone will say 'this is why we needed to expand NATO'
George Kennan is well-documented as the architect/founder of the containment strategy, and his 1998 quote to the New York Times explicitly predicted Russia would react adversely and that NATO expansionists would then say 'we always told you that is how the Russians are' — closely matching the paraphrase given in the transcript.
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Henry Kissinger said Ukraine would have to be a special arrangement and that Ukraine will not come into NATO
Kissinger consistently opposed Ukrainian NATO membership for years, stating flatly 'Ukraine should not join NATO' after 2014 and advocating for a neutral/buffer status. He only reversed this position after Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion, so his pre-2022 position as described in the transcript is accurate.
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Putin invaded Ukraine because he wanted to annex the whole country
While Putin's initial assault appeared aimed at regime change and subjugation of the entire country, analysts debate whether his ultimate goal was full annexation or something more limited. His stated goals shifted over time, and he formally annexed only four oblasts in 2022, suggesting the picture is more complex than total annexation.
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Putin told the Russian people that Ukraine was run by Nazis (denazification as justification for invasion)
Putin publicly declared 'denazification' as an official goal of the invasion in his February 24, 2022 speech, claiming Ukraine's government were neo-Nazis under Western control. These allegations were widely rejected as untrue by independent analysts and fact-checkers.
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The whole of Ukraine was not run by Nazis, but there certainly were Nazis there
While far-right groups like the Azov Battalion did exist in Ukraine, researchers and fact-checkers have concluded that the Russian government misrepresented and greatly inflated the role of neo-Nazis to justify the invasion. Saying 'there certainly were Nazis' risks lending credibility to Putin's framing; far-right parties performed very poorly in Ukrainian elections.
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Putin decided he wanted to gobble up Ukraine because he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union
Putin has described the Soviet Union's collapse as 'the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century' and Russian foreign policy has sought to re-impose control over former Soviet states, lending some support to this claim. However, many analysts characterise his primary goal as eliminating Ukrainian statehood and democracy rather than literally reconstituting the USSR, making this a simplification.
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Ukraine is in its third year of war
Russia's full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022. By February 2025, the war entered its fourth calendar year, though the 'third year' framing (meaning the third year of fighting) was accurate at the time this was likely recorded.
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Kamala Harris openly said that NATO was going to join Ukraine (or Ukraine was going to join NATO) shortly before the invasion
Harris did not explicitly say Ukraine was imminently joining NATO. She tweeted in a way that some interpreted as implying Ukraine was a NATO member, which she deleted, and she spoke at the Munich Security Conference in February 2022 about Ukraine and NATO unity but did not announce imminent membership. The claim exaggerates or mischaracterizes what she actually said.
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Putin's dream is the reconstitution of the Soviet Union's territory
Putin has famously said 'Anyone who wants it [the Soviet Union] restored has no brains,' directly contradicting the claim. While he called the Soviet collapse the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century' and has shown expansionist tendencies, characterizing his goal as outright reconstitution of Soviet territory oversimplifies and partly misrepresents his stated positions.
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In 2008 at the Bucharest summit, NATO announced that Ukraine would be coming into NATO.
The 2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration explicitly stated 'these countries [Ukraine and Georgia] will become members of NATO,' and NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer confirmed it with 'not a sliver of a doubt.' No Membership Action Plan was granted, but the political commitment was unambiguous.
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The US poured $100 million into street protests against the democratically elected president of Ukraine over whether he would tilt toward an economic deal with Europe or with Putin
The commonly cited figure for US spending tied to Ukraine's Maidan period is $5 billion spent in Ukraine since 1991 on democracy promotion broadly — not $100 million specifically directed at street protests. That $5 billion figure itself is widely debunked as a misrepresentation of a Victoria Nuland speech. The actual US-funded protest support figure is contested and far less clear-cut. Additionally, while Yanukovych was elected in a 2010 election deemed largely legitimate by OSCE observers, calling the Maidan purely a US-orchestrated protest obscures that it was primarily a spontaneous civic uprising against his suspension of the EU Association Agreement.
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The Ukrainian armed forces were retaking territory from the Russians in the fall of 2022
Ukraine launched major counteroffensives in Kharkiv Oblast (September 2022) and Kherson Oblast (August–November 2022), successfully retaking significant territory from Russian forces in the fall of 2022.
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Vladimir Putin came in on Assad's request and took military actions against ISIS.
Wikipedia confirms Russia launched its military intervention in Syria in September 2015 at the request of the Assad government, and the intervention included operations against ISIS/ISIL alongside other rebel groups.
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In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and the head of the European Union proposed banning all Russian oil from Europe.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed a ban on Russian oil imports in May 2022. However, the ban was phased and included exceptions, especially for some pipeline supplies, rather than immediately banning all Russian oil from Europe.
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Russian and Iranian oil were mostly cut off from the global oil market, leaving the oil with nobody to buy it.
Sanctions restricted and redirected Russian and Iranian oil trade but did not mostly eliminate buyers. Both countries continued exporting substantial volumes, with China among the principal buyers; Russian oil also continued reaching other markets under changing sanctions and price-cap arrangements.
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China obtained Iranian and Russian oil using dark-fleet tankers, Malaysian relabeling or routing, small 'teapot' refineries, and financial channels including the Bank of Kunlun.
The Atlantic Council and U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission describe these as documented or reported sanctions-evasion mechanisms, including shadow or dark fleets, Malaysian transshipment and relabeling practices, independent Chinese teapot refineries, renminbi payments, and the Bank of Kunlun.
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China, Russia, and Iran bypassed this system by using China's currency to process oil sales, making the trades basically invisible to the US financial system and preventing the US government from blocking them.
China and Russia have increased use of yuan and other non-dollar settlement methods, and Iranian oil has been sold through sanctions-evasion networks. But non-dollar settlement does not make transactions invisible or immune from U.S. sanctions; the United States can target foreign banks, intermediaries, vessels, insurers, and other participants.
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The euro and Japanese yen are probably the only other currencies valuable enough to support this kind of trade, but Japan and the European Union support sanctions on Iran and Russia.
The euro and yen are major international currencies, and Japan and the EU have imposed sanctions on Russia and Iran. However, the claim that they are the only other currencies capable of supporting such trade is subjective and unsupported; oil trade can also use other currencies, barter, intermediaries, or offshore arrangements.
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China, as the only willing buyer of Iranian and Russian oil, gets a large discount.
Sanctioned Iranian and Russian crude has commonly traded at discounts because of sanctions, shipping, insurance, and payment risks, and Chinese independent refiners have been major buyers. China is not literally the only buyer, however, and the size of the discount varies by grade, route, and time.
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China quietly stockpiled more than one billion barrels of mostly Iranian and Russian oil.
Estimates indicate China held roughly 1.4 billion barrels of strategic oil inventories by December 2025, but the composition is not publicly disclosed and available evidence does not establish that most of the stockpile was Iranian and Russian oil.
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For roughly the last century, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia have been the three biggest oil producers by far.
The current top three producers are the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, but that has not been true continuously for the last century: production leadership has also included the Soviet Union and other countries, while Saudi Arabia was not a major producer at the beginning of the period.
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Russia is under global sanction and can barely sell its own oil.
Russia faces extensive sanctions and price-cap restrictions, but sanctions are not universal, and Russia continues to produce and export large volumes of oil, particularly to non-Western buyers. It therefore does not merely 'barely' sell its oil.
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Sigmar Gabriel, the former socialist minister, just came out yesterday and said the same thing [that there should be direct contact/negotiations with Russia].
In mid-June 2024, coinciding with the Ukraine Peace Summit in Switzerland, former German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel (of the Social Democratic Party, SPD) stated in interviews that direct diplomatic negotiations with Russia would eventually be necessary to end the war.
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Russia does not have a blockade around Ukraine.
Following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia implemented a naval blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports, which halted critical maritime trade, particularly grain exports, until military actions and agreements like the Black Sea Grain Initiative partially bypassed or relieved it.
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