Fact check: Zelenskyy wasn't killed in a Russian airstrike 25.06.2026

A wave of social media posts, including one with 2.7 million views, falsely claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was killed in a Russian airstrike. A DW fact check finds the claim baseless. Zelenskyy posted a video on his official X account on Tuesday showing him meeting with Mathias Cormann, Secretary-General of the OECD. The OECD confirmed the meeting took place. The explosion video attached to the posts is actually footage from the 2015 Tianjin warehouse explosion in China, not an airstrike in Ukraine. Furthermore, a scan of major Ukrainian news outlets such as The Kyiv Post and Kyiv Independent found no coverage of the alleged incident.

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