#UkraineFacts: How fact-checkers collaborated to combat false information about the war in Ukraine  Email not displaying correctly?
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The surging misinformation on the Russian invasion of Ukraine brought the fact-checking community together, leading to the publication of more than 1,600 fact-checks in close to three weeks.
The battle for facts in Ukraine
A map showing where false information about the war in Ukraine has circulated and has been debunked by IFCN’s verified signatories. (ukrainefacts.org)

As the fighting in Ukraine enters its third week, fact-checkers continue to be deeply involved in a parallel battle: the fight against disinformation about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

StopFake ([link removed]) and VoxUkraine ([link removed]) , the Ukrainian fact-checking organizations that are signatories to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles, have long worked to debunk bogus claims about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. When the war began, misinformation spread to other countries, and it became overwhelming for any one or two organizations to handle.

Under the initiative #UkraineFacts ([link removed]) , the fact-checking community created a collaboration to combat the widely misleading claims that were spreading across the world and in other languages. The site, developed by Spanish fact-checking site Maldita.es ([link removed]) , allows users to see in which countries each false claim has been detected and provides access to debunks by different fact-checking organizations.

To date, the more than 100 fact-checking organizations, who’ve all vowed to uphold IFCN’s principles of nonpartisanship and transparency, have published more than 1,600 fact-checks on falsehoods about the invasion, with 700 investigated by at least two independent organizations.

Fact-checkers in Ukraine say they’ve seen how disinformation can be used as a weapon of war. StopFake’s Alina Mosendz told Highlighters ([link removed]) that since 2014, StopFake has been “striving to counter Russian propaganda that itself has been seeking to prepare Russians, Ukrainians, and perhaps even Europeans, for war.” Read more ([link removed]) of Alina’s experience as a fact-checker in this time of war.
IFCN Talks on International Fact-Checking Day
The theme for this year’s event is #FactCheckingisEssential.

International Fact-Checking Day, April 2, is fast approaching, and IFCN has announced three webinars. Because the day falls on a Saturday, the programs focused on this year’s theme, #FactCheckingIsEssential, have been spread throughout the week.

On April 4, IFCN’s international training manager, Alanna Dvorak, will host a panel on the fact-checking community’s collaborative initiative to combat disinformation around the war in Ukraine. The scheduled speakers are VoxUkraine’s misinformation lead, Yuliia Zhaha, Maldita’s head of disinformation, Andrés Jiménez and Ahmad Primo, the founder of Syrian fact-checking site Verify Sy.

The second IFCN Talk, on April 5, will focus on why fact-checkers are under attack, and how to respond to the harassment. Yours truly, the community and impact manager at the IFCN, will moderate the discussion between Ghana Fact’s Rabiu Alhassan, Vera Files’ Ellen Tordesillas and Science Feedback’s Emmanuel Vincent.

The last webinar on April 6 will be about IFCN’s grantmaking efforts to support the fact-checking community. Ferdi Ozsoy, the IFCN program manager, will be joined by some beneficiaries to discuss the impact of their work.

Expect updates on registration and other event details on factcheckingday.com in the coming days. Stand by for op-eds from a diverse group of fact-checkers on “International Fact-Checking Week.”

The future host of Factually, Seth Smalley, starts this week as an IFCN reporter based in St. Petersburg, Florida. He has extensive experience reporting for local community papers, as well as nationally recognized publications. For the past year or so, Seth has lived in Mexico and Latin America while working as a freelance journalist. He has written for Vice, The Austin Monitor and more, covering labor, government, transportation and the prison industrial complex.

Any corrections? Tips? We’d love to hear from you: Email me or Seth at , and

Thank you for reading Factually.

Enock Nyariki
Community and impact manager
International Fact-Checking Network
@enocknyariki ([link removed])

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