Misinformation is often spread regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine to sway public opinion about support for Kyiv and put pressure on western governments.
An image doing the rounds on social media allegedly shows a list of US politicians, including President Joe Biden, who have received bribes in return for support for Ukraine.
Text accompanying the list claims that a Ukrainian official released the names, as well as the amounts that each person has supposedly received.
Biden has allegedly received $92 million (€89.6 million), for example, while former speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has taken home $86 million, and former senator Mitt Romney has received $71 million, according to the list.
The image, posted on the likes of Threads and X, shows a range of politicians across the US political divide.
Regardless, the claims are false — there’s no evidence that any of the individuals mentioned have received any illicit payments from Ukraine in return for their pushing of support for Kyiv against the Russian invasion.
There are no legitimate news outlets reporting on the news, and it’s also implausible that a Ukrainian official would release the statistics and incriminate the very politicians the country is relying on for financial aid.
The text accompanying the list tends to be badly written — another hallmark of untrustworthy news, especially as the mistakes are often the same, suggesting they’re copied, pasted, and shared en masse.
Searching for earlier instances of the claims on X shows that it originates from at least as far back as 2023, and has been shared on various occasions since then.
Other fact-checkers from reputable news organisations debunked the claims at those times as well, and there’s no reason to believe that the situation has changed since then.
Pro-Russian propaganda and other Ukraine detractors are often keen to spread false or misleading claims about support for Kyiv to sway public opinion and in turn, put pressure on western governments.
As of 30 September 2024, the US’s Ukraine response funding totals nearly $183 billion since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, according to official Ukraine Oversight figures.
In Europe, as of January, the EU says it has made available more than $140 billion in financial, military, humanitarian and refugee assistance through its collective and individual member-state measures in the same period.
Washington is Ukraine’s single biggest donor, yet as Donald Trump prepares to reenter the White House, European allies are concerned that the US could reduce or even stop providing aid altogether due to the president-elect’s previous criticism of the amount the US sends.
The outgoing Biden administration is giving Ukraine as much military support as it can, including a $500 million weapons package aimed at putting Kyiv in the strongest possible position for potential negotiations to end the war.
The defence ministers of Europe’s five biggest military spenders — France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK — met near Warsaw on Monday to discuss maintaining support for Ukraine and enhancing domestic weapons production ahead of any shifts in US policy.
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