Antifake / Factcheck

13 July 2023

Top-5 Fake News. Pedophiles and Bestiality are Defended in West, F-16s are not Supplied to Ukraine due to Slow Counteroffensive, Poland Increases Enrollment in Military Colleges

Further: Lukashenko's fantasies about Germany's destroyed economy and its nuclear energy. Top-5 Fake News spotted by the Weekly Top Fake team.

Fake#1 The US destroyed Germany's economy

Fake date 6.07.2023

Germany is no longer the world's fourth largest economy, and the Americans are to blame, claims Alexander Lukashenko at his big press conference for Belarusian and foreign media on July 6.

“There is no EU. There is no Europe. They are under the US thumb completely. And what is accepted in Washington, is accepted by the Europeans, even, surprisingly, to their own disadvantage.

Say Germany. It was the world's fourth economy.

Where is it now? And why was it necessary to destroy such a high-tech economy? Because of scare, fear, or to please someone?” he said.

Statistics wear down this Lukashenko's statement.

Indeed, according to the World Bank, Germany's GDP has declined from $4.26 trillion in 2021 to $4.07 trillion in 2022. Nevertheless, the country has been the world's fourth economy before the war in Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions against Russia, and remains now.

Only the United States, China, and Japan are ahead of Germany in terms of GDP. Next, India follows with a margin of almost $700 billion.

Fake#2 Germany changed its mind about nuclear power plants shutting down 

Fake date 3.07.2023

Alexander Lukashenko praised his own decision to build a nuclear power plant in Belarus in his address on Independence Day. In support of his words, he referred to Germany, which allegedly changed its mind about abandoning nuclear energy. 

“When natural gas had spiked to $2,000 per cubic meter, when Russian cheap gas and oil had run out for them, they started saying that nuclear energy was green energy. It was the safest and it needed to be developed. The Germans quietly delayed the closure of what they planned to shut down,” claimed Lukashenko on July 3.

Initially, Germany did plan to close the last nuclear power plants by the end of 2022, but then, due to high energy prices, the government extended its operation term. Noteworthy, Berlin was not going to develop nuclear energy. 

Germany has shut down the last three nuclear power plants. It happened on April 16, 2023.

Fake#3 Ukraine’s counteroffensive does not show any results

Fake date 4.07.2023

The allies do not supply aircraft to Ukraine because the counteroffensive does not show results, claims analyst of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies Aleksey Avdonin.

"The US military leadership stated, that it was too early to supply F-16s to Ukraine so far, because there was no normal result, result for them, of counteroffensive. Therefore, they had high hopes for the counteroffensive and expected that there would be some great result that they could triumphantly present or show at this Summit [NATO]. But the Summit turned into a kind of zilch," he said on the air of Alfa Radio on July 4.

It seems that Avdonin repeats what the Russian pro-war media published, referring to top NATO Admiral Rob Bauer's interview with LBC.

However, in the original interview, Admiral Rob Bauer attributed the delay in F-16 fighters' supply to other reasons:

“The discussion on the fighters is an important one, but it will not be solved in the short term for this counteroffensive…

Training those pilots, training the technicians, making sure there is a logistic organization that can actually sustain these aircraft will not be available before this counteroffensive.” 

So, the reasons for the more slowly than expected aircraft supply are attributed to the logistics and preceding organizational work, but not to the results of the counteroffensive, as Avdonin claims.

The Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov told the same a month ago. Then he admitted in an interview with the Japanese channel NHK, that training F-16 pilots needed time, and Ukraine expected the first fighters in the autumn or winter.

Thus, Rob Bauer only confirmed what has already known.

Fake#4 Poland to increase enrollment in military colleges by five times

Fake date 3.07.2023

In mid-June, Alexander Lukashenko announces that Belarus has gotten Russian nuclear weapons. Poland, in response, declares that authorities are also ready to deploy nuclear warheads on its territory for protection against potential Russian aggression.

And in this context, on July 3, Warsaw was accused of militarization by the authors of the program Kontury on the ONT TV channel:

“Instead of the history, Poles will study the war more. In Poland, the enrollment number of military colleges is planned to be increased five times. More than 2 thousand people. It is only a quota for future officers”.

The statement is false. 

On May 31, the Polish Ministry of Defense published a decree. According to the document, new academic year enrollment has increased, but only in one military higher education institution, the Polish Air Force Academy. And only for 49 students. Among them, 21 will be trained in navigation, 10 — in logistics, another 10 — in safety engineering, and 8 — in aviation and astronautics. 

Buying new FA-50 and F-35 military aircraft caused the necessity to train new pilots, the Polish Ministry of Defense explains. 

Enrollment plans for all other military colleges have no changes. There are three more military higher education institutions in Poland. In total, 2,089 people will enroll there in the new academic year.

Noteworthy, last year Poland has yet increased enrollment by almost 500 people. Instead of 1350 cadets, 1830 got in. For the 2023—2024 academic year, they planned 2040 people, and 2089 got in. 

Totally in two years, enrollment has increased by more than 700 people. That is, by about 50%, and not by 5 times.

Fake#5 Spain has legalized the right to bestiality, UN protects pedophiles' rights, and Americans buy stolen children

Fake date 25.06.2023 

The West fights for the rights of the LGBT community but ignores the problem of kidnapping, claims the host of Belarus 1 TV Ekaterina Tikhomirova.

“In the 21st century from every iron they trumpet about human rights protection. The rights to self-expression of LGBT people and their right to be parents. Spain has legalized the right to bestiality.

Here is one more. As a result of the long and painstaking work of both specialists from the International Committee of Jurists and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, a radical project has emerged, that is a resolution recommending that all UN countries decriminalize sexual activity of all kinds. 

In other words, to legalize pedophilia. That is, it's a struggle for the rights of pedophiles,” Ekaterina Tikhomirova said on June 25 on air of her program Katyushin Raschyot. 

In Spain, they have really changed the legislation on the animal cruelty issue, removing the article on the sexual exploitation of animals from the Criminal Code. However, it has been replaced by another article that interprets animal cruelty more widely. Now it is separately stated that cruelty includes sexual nature acts. 

Moreover, the official comment states that these changes are aimed at expanding responsibility. If earlier the maximum punishment for this crime was limited to 1 year of imprisonment, now the term has been increased to 18 months. 

In addition, now the Criminal Code deals with illegal cases of cruelty to any animals, and not just domestic ones, as it was before. 

Also, it's not true that the UN protects pedophiles.

The International Commission of Jurists issued a report, saying that human rights should be kept in mind when dealing with criminal cases involving abortion, drug use, and possession, HIV infection, and some cases of consensual sex.

“The enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them,” the report says. 

However, this wording also caused accusations of calls for the legalization of pedophilia. Therefore, soon the Commission issued a clarification, that

they “do not call for the decriminalization of sex with children, nor do they call for the abolition of a domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex”. 

“According to official statistics, there are millions of missing children on the planet. And every year there are more of them. In Europe, 250,000 are reported missing every year. Every 2 Minutes a child disappears in Europe,” continued Tikhomirova.

Really, the European Federation “Missing Children Europe” gives such data — 250 thousand children annually. The majority of these incidents involved children who ran away. Additionally, 24% involved parental abductions, ​​when parents after a divorce could not agree on who the child would live with.

While a small yet significant portion, 3%, involved missing children in migration. 

Katerina Tikhomirova is silent about this fact. From her story, it follows that 250 thousand children disappear without a trace.

“Нere are just a few examples. You see the children in this video. They are sold at the border between Mexico and the United States,” she comments on the video with tied children and swarthy men that count money nearby.

The BIC team has found this video on Facebook. The original version has a repeated message, that this incident is not real, the people in it are actors, and the video was made to raise awareness.

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