A Taiwanese media outlet reported that Ukraine’s all-robot unit destroyed a Russian company of soldiers near the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine in December, citing American daily The Wall Street Journal.
But the claim is false. The Wall Street Journal did not publish such a report. The Taiwanese media later issued a correction, saying that the news was an “allegation.”
The report was published by the Taiwanese media outlet Newtalk News on Jan. 2.
The report originally claimed that Ukraine’s all-robot combined-arms unit “wiped out” a Russian company of soldiers on Dec. 21, 2024, near the Kharkiv city in eastern Ukraine, citing The Wall Street Journal as its source.
The news was later reposted by the news aggregate sites LINE Today and Yahoo News as well as some Chinese social media users.
But the claim is false.
Keyword searches found no reports published by The Wall Street Journal on Ukraine’s all-robot unit destroying a Russian company of soldiers in December.
The newspaper also told AFC that it had not published such a report.
Newtalk’s report
In response to AFCL’s inquiries, Newtalk said the information came from Chinese-language news sites Popyard News and Jiaxi Net and it had updated its report by replacing its citation from The Wall Street Journal to Jaxi Net.
In its updated version of the report, Newtalk added the claim was an “allegation.”
Jiaxi Net said that it had sourced the news from The Wall Street Journal, but it did not include a link to the original article or other credible sources.
A keyword search found reports published by Forbes and The Telegraph about Ukraine’s use of an “all-robot combined-arms operation” that utilized “crawling and flying drones” to attack Russian units on a stretch of the front line near Kharkiv.
The Telegraph quotes Volodymyr Dehtiarov, a representative of Ukraine’s Khartiia Brigade, as calling the attack a “success.”
However, Dehtiarov did not claim the robots “wiped out a Russian company” and the publication emphasized the claim was unverified.
Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang.
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