Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 22/06/2022
In early June, US President Joseph Biden delivered remarks about the current Ukraine-Russia conflict at a press conference, which prompted some media outlets to report false information, claiming that he announced that Ukraine would have to cede part of its territory to Russia.
This information was first reported by the New York Post (NYP), whereas Tanjug agency took the lead among outlets from our language area, publishing an article under the headline “NYP: Biden is not ruling out that Ukraine’s territorial concessions to Russia.”
The Tanjug article of June 3 reads as follows:
“US President Joseph Biden did not rule out the possibility of Ukraine having to cede part of territory to Russia in order to end the war with Moscow,” reads the “New York Post” (NYP), quoting today’s statement made by the US president. The New York daily paper cites Biden’s address, during which he was asked by a journalist “whether Ukraine will have to give up part of its territory in order to reach peace.”
This information was then cited by Skynews.rs, Radio-television of Vojvodina (RTV), Pravda, Telegraf…
Republika took a different direction when featuring the headline “Ukrainians will have to cede part of the territory to Russia, says a shocking statement made by Biden”, and HappyTV went a step further when stating that “Biden is ready to hack up Ukraine”, as did Alo, which quotes:
“UKRAINIANS WILL HAVE TO GIVE UP PART OF TERRITORY TO RUSSIA: Biden’s shocking statement about the possible epilogue of the war in Ukraine”
A full video of Biden’s press conference is available on YouTube and at 18:24 time stamp, a journalist is heard asking a question – does Ukraine have to cede territory to achieve some peace, to which he answered:
“From the beginning, I’ve said and I’ve been – not everyone has agreed with me – nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. It’s their territory. I’m not going to tell them what they should and shouldn’t do. But it appears to me that, at some point along the line, there’s going to have to be a negotiated settlement here. And what that entails, I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows at the time. But in the meantime, we’re going to continue to put the Ukrainians in a position where they can defend themselves”, the US president responded.
Therefore, the US president did not in fact say that Ukraine will have to cede part of its territory to Russia.
Newsweek and Stopfake fact-checked the false information that was spread in foreign language outlets.
We have assigned the “disinformation” rating to reports featured by Happy TV, Republika, and Alo web portals.
The “disinformation” rating is assigned to media reports containing a “mix” of facts and inaccurate or semi-true content. In such cases, the media may not necessarily be aware of incorrect information being published alongside truthful ones. Reports containing false attributions or misleading titles are also labeled as disinformation.
