NEW YORK (AP)CLAIM: Ukraine’s president has surrendered and his country has fallen to Russia’s prolonged invasion.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not surrender as social media posts claimed on Saturday, and the country remains at war with Russia. In a Sunday interview, Zelenskyy rejected the idea of peace negotiations and dismissed the notion that the two sides were locked in a stalemate.
THE FACTS: Social media users are sharing a post claiming Ukraine is waving the white flag as Russia’s invasion of the country approaches the two-year mark in February.
“Zelensky has surrendered. Ukraine has fallen. Israel is next,” reads the viral post, which was written Nov. 4 and includes a black-and-white headshot of the Ukrainian president.
The post, which offered no proof of a surrender, has been liked or shared more than 10,000 times on X, formerly Twitter, as of Monday. It’s also been widely shared on Instagram and other social media platforms.
But Ukraine did not abruptly surrender on Saturday -- the day the viral social media post appeared -- and there hasn’t been any major development on either side to bring the fighting to a close.
In fact, both sides traded salvos over the weekend.
The Associated Press reported Sunday that a Ukrainian missile strike damaged a Russian military vessel in a shipyard in Kerch, a port city in
The Russian Defense Ministry said it shot down 13 of the 15 cruise missiles fired by Ukraine late Saturday but didn’t give details about the damaged ship, which Ukraine suggested in a statement was “one of the most modern ships of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.”
“Satellite imagery from November 4 shows that the strike damaged a Project 22800 Karakurt-class Kalibr missile carrier corvette at the shipyard, although the extent of the damage to the ship is currently unclear,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank that’s been providing daily updates on the war.
Meanwhile Russia launched a barrage of nighttime drone and missile attacks on Friday across 10 of Ukraine’s 24 regions, destroying residences, public buildings and other infrastructure, the AP reported.
Russian officials have also said a Ukrainian missile struck an employment center in Russian-occupied Kherson on Friday, causing civilian deaths and injuries, other news outlets reported.
The attacks came after U.S. officials on Thursday said the country would provide $425 million in new military aid to Ukraine, including about $300 million in long-term funding to buy laser-guided munitions designed to take out drones.
Zelenskyy, for his part, rejected claims that the war was entering a stalemate in an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“They thought they would checkmate us, but this didn’t happen,” he said, referring to the invading Russian army. “I don’t think that this is a stalemate.” ___ This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.