A news article says that Russian president Vladimir Putin is supporting US president Donald Trump in stopping funding the World Health Organization. Putin has said that the WHO is evil and should be terminated.
“Putin backs Trump decision says ‘We should terminate WHO” they are evil,” reads the headline of an article on the Nigeria-based website Sahara Gist., “The Russian President Vladimir Putin has supported the decision of the US President to stop funding WHO over their failure to investigate on Covid-19 outbreak,” the poorly written five-paragraph article claims., Its final paragraph reads: “According to the Russian President Vladimir Putin said: ‘The American government has made the best move so far, in terminating the funding of WHO, they are not capable to protect the world from this virus, they have failed us, I hereby support the American government in this, I will also used this medium to urge the US government to terminate the WHO agenda from Existence because they are Evil.’ Vladimir Putin said.”, The WHO is the World Health Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health., The article has been widely shared on Facebook, where it’s been viewed more than 400,000 times., “Gist” is Nigerian slang for “gossip”. But is Sahara Gist’s story true?, On 14 April 2020 US president Donald Trump announced that he would halt funding of the WHO because it had “failed in its basic duty” to respond to the coronavirus pandemic., In 2018 and 2019, the US funded 14.7% of the WHO’s budget – about US$412 million a year. It was the agency’s largest contributor., His decision to freeze funds in the middle of a global pandemic was met with concern and condemnation by medical experts and world leaders., António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, said “now is not the time” to halt funding. “It is also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus … Now is the time for unity and for the international community to work together in solidarity to stop this virus and its shattering consequences.”, Critics included officials in Putin’s government. Sergey Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, described Trump’s decision a “very selfish approach” and “very disturbing”., The Russian government, he said, “call on the US to abandon further attacks on the WHO and pursue a responsible policy that will not destroy the framework of international cooperation in the biomedical field –but rather strengthen this partnership and create the basis for its further improvement”., Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for the Kremlin, said: “The heads of the G20, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, support the work of the WHO and place their hopes on the WHO’s future work to analyse the experience of this pandemic.”, If senior members of Putin’s government denounced Trump’s decision, the Russian president would be highly unlikely to support it., And the news has not been reported by any credible media organisation., A Google search for the quote Sahara Gist attributes to Putin only returns the article itself. –Taryn Willows, , "A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”. What should you do? First, dont delete!", Click on our guide for the steps you should follow., Publishers guide, Africa Check is a partner in Facebook’s third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media., The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it., You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how., Africa Check is working with the CoronaVirusFacts/DatosCoronaVirus Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 fact-checkers fighting misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic., Learn more about the alliance here., , © Copyright Africa Check 2020. Read our republishing guidelines.\xa0You may reproduce this piece or content from it for the purpose of reporting and/or discussing news and current events. This is subject to: Crediting Africa Check in the byline, keeping all hyperlinks to the sources used and adding this sentence at the end of your publication: “This report was written by Africa Check, a non-partisan fact-checking organisation. View the original piece on their website", with a link back to this page., We depend on voluntary donations to run this site. Please help us to keep public figures accountable by supporting the project., Find out more, For democracy to function, public figures need to be held to account for what they say. The claims they make need to be checked, openly and impartially. Africa Check is an independent, non-partisan organisation which assesses claims made in the public arena using journalistic skills and evidence drawn from the latest online tools, readers, public sources and experts, sorting fact from fiction and publishing the results., , Get a weekly dose of facts, straight to your inbox.
No, Russia’s Putin hasn’t backed Trump’s decision to freeze funding of ‘evil’ WHO | Africa Check