Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 16/05/2023
While reporting what Christopher Cavoli, commander of NATO forces in Europe and a general of the United States Armed Forces, said before the House Armed Services Committee of the US House of Representatives, several web portals incorrectly stated that he said that “Russia is winning the war” in Ukraine.
On April 30, 2023, web portal Nulta tacka published an article with the following title:
VIDEO – American General: Russia is actually winning the war in Ukraine
The article reports that Christopher Cavoli, commander of NATO forces in Europe and general of the United States Armed Forces, testified before the House Armed Services Committee. During the hearing, the article states, Cavoli stated that “Russia is winning the war in Ukraine”.
(…)Despite reports from the Western media that Ukraine is on the verge of victory against Russia, the opposite is actually true, US Army General Christopher Cavoli told Congress last week.
On Wednesday, General Cavoli, in his testimony to the Committee of the House of Representatives on Armed Forces, explained that the media had largely misrepresented the “degradation of the Russian forces”.
“A large part of the Russian army was not negatively affected by this conflict”, said Cavoli.
And not only that, he said, but Russia’s total military activity outside the sphere of the Ukrainian conflict is the highest in the last few years(…)
A post from the TruNews Twitter account is embedded in the article. In a tweet published on this account on April 28, 2023, in English, it is stated that this is an unexpected discovery and that “the Western media lied to us about the conflict in Ukraine”. “The Russians are actually winning, and their submarine forces are more active than ever before. This was stated by an American general”, the tweet states, featuring a link to an article on the website of the same name.
An article with identical content was published on the web portal Epoha portal on May 1, 2023.
What are the facts?
General Cavoli spoke on April 26, 2023, before the Committee for Armed Forces of the House of Representatives of the US Congress (House Armed Service Committee). His presentation is available on the official website of this committee in a video format. It is clear from the video that Cavoli did not state that “Russia is winning the war in Ukraine”, as stated in the articles published on web portals Nulta tacka and Epoha.
Claims that Cavoli declared that Russia was winning the war were also shared in the Russian-speaking world and their accuracy was verified by the Ukrainian fact-checking web portal StopFake. In the analysis published on May 5, 2023, StopFake quoted a part of his speech in which he comments on the bigger picture of the war in Ukraine.
Commenting on the general situation with the Russian war against Ukraine, General Cavoli noted:
“Even if we are quite optimistic about the future of Ukraine, this war is far from over. Russia remains an acute threat to Euro-Atlantic security. The national defence strategy rightly draws our attention to this. Russia, of course, is not the only problem in Europe. China continues to increase its influence on us, and this represents a risk for the United States of America, allies, partners and their interests…”.
Therefore, Cavoli did not say that Russia is winning, but only that it remains a threat to many countries, especially the United States of America.
What does the video show?
In addition to the aforementioned description that the American general confirmed that Russia is winning the war, the embedded tweet from the TruNews Twitter account also contains a two-minute video.
In the first part of the video, General Cavoli can be heard talking about the specifics of the Russian forces, with an emphasis on their submarine fleet, which he claims is more active in the Atlantic than ever before. In that part of the video (up to 0.49), he did not say anything similar to Russia winning the war.
The video is interrupted in that part. Instead of General Cavoli’s speech from the hearing before the Armed Forces Committee, two men are shown.
Photo: Screenshot/TruNews
This part of the video shows Rick Wiles, a popular conspiracy theorist. He announced that Russia was winning (1:45). The video was originally published on the TruNews website on April 27, 2023. In fact, Rick Wiles and his guest on the show watched General Cavoli’s statement and then commented on it, and the clip from the show was tweeted.
According to the search results, Rick Wiles is the owner of TruNews, which is known as a right-wing conspiracy theory and fake news website.
Given all the stated facts, we rate the claim from the article of the web portal Nulta tacka suggesting that the American general declared that Russia is actually winning the war in Ukraine as fake news. General Cavoli, who is credited with such a statement, never said it.
We rate all subsequent publications of identical claims as the distribution of fake news.