No, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hasn’t surrendered to Russia

More than 20 months into the Russia-Ukraine war, social media users are claiming the fighting has suddenly stopped.

A Nov. 4 Instagram post shared a screenshot of an X post with a black-and-white photo of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Text above the photo read, "Zelensky has surrendered. Ukraine has fallen. Israel is next."

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

(Screengrab from Instagram)

The original post on X was flagged by the social media platform’s Community Notes feature, which allows readers to add brief context to posts they view as misleading.

Featured Fact-check

Threads posts

stated on November 10, 2024 in a Threads post

“NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says that ‘if Trump surrenders Ukraine to Putin, he will personally expel the United States from the alliance.’”

There is no evidence that Zelenskyy has ordered the Ukrainian military to surrender to Russia, and we found no credible reports supporting this claim.

This is not the first time a claim like this has spread. In March 2022, less than one month after Russia began its invasion, a deepfake video of Zelenskyy calling for Ukrainian troops to lay down their weapons circulated online.

Zelenskyy himself has rejected the idea of conceding to Russia. In a December 2022 address to the U.S. Congress, Zelenskyy said, "Ukraine holds its lines and will never surrender."

News outlets worldwide continue to report on the Russia-Ukraine war’s developments, and there have been no signs of either side surrendering. On Nov. 5, Zelenskyy dismissed suggestions that the war had reached a stalemate, NBC News reported.

We rate the claim that Zelenskyy has surrendered False.