Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

We’re closing this live page now, but you’ll see more of our analysis across the BBC through the rest of the day.

Our team in Washington DC will be digging further into President Donald Trump’s claim that he has personally ended six wars.

Scroll back here to see how we debunked an AI-generated image supposedly showing world leaders waiting at the White House and read about how we tracked when it started going viral online.

We also looked at estimates for how big a potential peacekeeping force in Ukraine would have to be and how many troops European armies could supply.

Plus we’ve been finding and verifying footage of drone strikes in Russia, flooding in India, a train attack in Ukraine and fighters in Burkina Faso.

We’ll be back here tomorrow morning.

Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify journalist

We reported earlier how we know an image purporting to show leaders waiting in the White House was an AI-generated fake.

We’ve also been looking at how the image spread - being shared by users across the world. Putting it into Google’s image search function returned hundreds of results. We took the first 250 shares from those - there were many more.

The earliest copies of the image we’ve seen were posted by Dutch-language X accounts on Monday afternoon, UK time, while the earliest posts with large numbers of views were from pro-Russian accounts - that notched up 1.3 million views.

The most-viewed copy, of all those we have seen, was posted in the early evening and eventually seen 2.2 million times, leading to a wave of posts over the next hour.

Those sharing it posted mocking captions, across Twitter and Telegram, in languages including English, German, Italian, Belarusian, Russian, French, Arabic and Polish. This added another 1.7 million views.

At around 19:00, starting on Ukrainian Telegram and a fact-checking Discord community, posts started pointing out that it was generative AI. These included posts by Ukrainian channels Trukha and Insider UA which gained a million views in total.

Russian Telegram accounts, including a military commentator, a pro-Kremlin blogger, and a breaking news channel, pointed out that it was AI-generated to more than half a million users. Meanwhile, conservative political US accounts on X began to share it with the acknowledgement it was AI-generated.

From 20:00 to 22:00, the most-viewed and shared copies we have seen were dominated by people who post fact-checks and verification. Among those who posted was Marek Magierowski, the former Polish ambassador to the US and Israel, who said: “Congratulations to all those who took the bait.”

Thomas Spencer and Rob England
BBC Verify

Earlier on we took a look at how large a potential security force for Ukraine might need to be - ranging from just a few thousand soldiers to almost 150,000.

President Trump has now ruled out any US troops being sent to Ukraine, taking the huge American army of 447,000 regular soldiers and 497,000 reservists out of the picture.

That means that any peacekeeping-type mission in Ukraine would need to draw its forces from the so-called "coalition of the willing".

Leaders from European countries with some of the largest regular armies - the UK, France, Germany, and Italy - were at the White House yesterday.

Here’s a look at how many troops each of them might be able to draw from.

Sebastian Vandermeersch
BBC Verify journalist

We’ve verified footage that appears to show fighters from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the Sahel region of West Africa which has been described as one of the continent’s deadliest militant groups, assaulting the town of Tanwalbougou in eastern Burkina Faso.

The footage, which emerged online in recent days, was reported to have been filmed during an attack on 17 August. We confirmed its authenticity by geolocating the videos, matching buildings and road layouts to satellite imagery, and carrying out reverse image searches to ensure the material was newly posted. The clothes, headdress and motorcycles seen in the footage are all typical for JNIM fighters.

Tanwalbougou is strategically located along the N6 highway, which connects Burkina Faso to Niamey, the capital of Niger.

The videos show dozens of men on motorcycles - some with heavy machine guns - moving through the town with little resistance. In one clip, we can see the fighters destroying a roundabout decorated with nationalist symbols while chanting “Allahu Akbar” – an Arabic phrase meaning “God is greatest”.

JNIM has waged a long-running insurgency against the state, which is now led by a military junta that has pledged to defeat the militants. However, large parts of the country remain outside government control.

Tamara Kovacevic
BBC Verify senior journalist

Robert Jenrick, the Conservative Party's shadow justice secretary, joined a protest against asylum hotels in Epping, external, Essex, at the weekend after writing that he supported peaceful protests, external against them.

But today Reform UK posted on X, external a video of Jenrick from 2022, shortly after being made immigration minister, saying: “We have procured more hotels very rapidly and more are coming on board literally every day.”

In the second part of the clip he talks about his predecessors, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, procuring more hotels for migrants every month and concludes: “What I have done in my short tenure is ramp that up and procure even more.”

The clips were taken from a Sky News interview in early November 2022, external where he defended the government’s record on moving people out of the Manston migrant processing centre - where Channel migrants were being held.

He defends the then-government’s record on moving people quickly on from Manston to more suitable accommodation.

We contacted Jenrick’s office for comment and his spokesperson said: “If it was up to Rob we would have no migrant hotels. But when he entered the Home Office it was a complete mess.

“The video was edited to miss the context that Manston processing centre was overflowing.“By the end of the year [2023] Robert was able to initiate over 100 hotel exits - the first minister to do so.”

Data shows the number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers started rising in 2020 before peaking in September 2023 at 398 - while Jenrick was immigration minister.

Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, X

Earlier we talked through how we verified video and photos of attacks in both Ukraine and Russia overnight.

We can now bring you more images of the aftermath of the attack on the city of Kremenchuk in Ukraine’s central Poltava region.

The image above is a screengrab from a video which shows huge plumes of smoke above residential blocks in Kremenchuk.

Nearby, a market appears to be taking place with fruit and fabrics on sale.

The smoke is rising from the direction of Kremenchuk oil refinery which is roughly 3.5km (2 miles) away from where the video was filmed.

Ukraine’s energy ministry said energy facilities in the Poltava region were targeted by Moscow’s armed forces."Russian occupation forces launched another massive attack on energy infrastructure facilities in the Poltava region, using cruise missiles and strike drones simultaneously. The attack resulted in large-scale fires," the ministry said on Telegram, external.

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

Talks at the White House on ending the war in Ukraine were dominated by discussions of a possible US security guarantee that could involve a military force on the ground supplied by the so-called “coalition of the willing” - countries that have indicated they would provide troops.

Trump has said today that the US won't put troops on the ground, and it’s not clear how large a security force might be, but military experts have already calculated a few options.

Some estimates are based on the size of previous UN peacekeeping missions along disputed borders, and then applying this to the 2,300km (1,430-mile) frontier between Ukraine and Russia.

If a security force resembled that of the relatively sparse UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan, the numbers in Ukraine could range from 816 to 6,528 personnel, according to Benjamin Jensen of the US Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But if the peacekeeping force mirrored the density of the UN Interim Force along the Israel-Lebanon border, Jensen estimates the numbers required in Ukraine could grow to more than 145,200 troops.

Jensen also points out that these estimates don’t include the additional air and naval support needed to defend Ukraine’s sky and coast.

Shruti Menon
BBC Verify senior journalist

We’ve been verifying new social media footage from the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh in the western Himalayas where a reported cloudburst - a sudden and intense downpour - has caused flooding and damage.

One video we’ve verified shows a section of a road has fallen into a fast-flowing river along a hillside.

We identified the exact location of the damaged road to Kullu district on the approach to the Bhoothnath bridge.

The location was confirmed by matching buildings seen on Google Earth imagery and recent photos uploaded on Google Maps.

A second verified video is from the same road but filmed at a different angle which shows the collapsed road and the fast-flowing river.

Monsoon flooding across northern India and Pakistan has killed hundreds of people and displaced many more.

Further south, India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, has also seen torrential rain and flooding.

We're monitoring footage being posted online to get a better picture of what is happening there.

Image source, X

Olga Robinson
BBC Verify assistant editor

As we reported earlier, an AI-generated image of European leaders waiting for President Donald Trump at the White House has been widely shared online.

But what are some of the tell tale signs of AI-generation that we can see in the image?

First, take a look at the legs – artificial intelligence often struggles with limbs.

In this case, there seems to an extra pair of legs next to French President Emmanuel Macron.

If we zoom in, we can also see the knees of the woman in red seem to blend into each other and there appears to be an extra high-heeled shoe further down.

The pattern on the floor is also inconsistent – another typical issue with AI-generated images.

There’s an odd blue panel at the front of the image and then the pattern seems to become irregular the further away they are from the viewer.

The women in the picture also bear no resemblance to either Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni or European Commission head Ursula Von Der Leyen.

Their clothes are entirely different from what the real leaders were wearing at the White House.

Image source, Reuters

Paul Brown
BBC Verify senior journalist

Image source, Ukrainian 65th Mechanised Brigade

Among the material we've been checking this morning from Ukraine are photos and video said to show a Russian train burning in an occupied area of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region.

Still images shared on a pro-Ukraine Telegram channel show fire on several carriages of a train in a rural area reportedly between the towns of Tokmak and Urozhayny.

The only details available to confirm the location are fields and tree lines - but we were able to match the terrain to imagery captured by the specialist satellite company Planet Labs yesterday.

In a video released by a Ukrainian drone unit we can see what appears to be the first stage of an attack on the same train.

The clip, captured from the drone apparently used in the strike, shows the train travelling towards the town of Molochansk before the footage cuts out - suggesting an impact.

The two locations are around 25km (15 miles) apart by rail, but it seems feasible that it is the same locomotive in both.

There are matching details on the train itself, and the multiple fires seen in the pictures suggest it was subject to multiple impacts over a period of time.

Recency checks on the stills and footage also confirm they were freshly uploaded this morning.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

BBC Verify is dedicated to examining the facts and claims behind a story to try to determine whether or not it is true - whether that’s a political statement, a video shared on social media, or images from a war zone.

And we’re also keen to hear from you - is there something you think we should investigate? We're particularly interested in claims you have heard or seen that maybe don’t seem right.

Or perhaps you’ve come across something online and want to know if it was created using AI or even a deepfake.

You can send your suggestions to the team here.

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

The BBC Verify team were closely monitoring comments made by world leaders during yesterday’s summit.

Here are two claims we fact-checked.

Did Trump end six wars without a 'ceasefire' being mentioned?

When asked if he would seek a ceasefire before negotiating a full peace deal, Trump claimed he had ended six wars, "without even the mention of the word ceasefire.”

But Trump has used the word "ceasefire" repeatedly when talking about these conflicts.

“India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE," he posted in May.

The president also posted the timings at which Israel and Iran would “start the CEASEFIRE”.

And after fighting between Thailand and Cambodia, Trump called on the Thai leader to “request a Ceasefire, and END to the War” before an official ceasefire was announced by US , externalS, externalecretary of , externalS, externaltate Marco Rubio, external.

The White House has previously listed remaining three wars as being between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Serbia and Kosovo, and Egypt and Ethiopia.

No evidence for Trump’s figure on US spending on Ukraine

Trump said "well over $300bn" had been spent on US military support for Ukraine, but we can’t find any evidence for this claim.

The US spent a total of $130.6bn (£98.9bn) between 24 January 2022 and 30 June 2025, according to the Kiel Institute, external.

The US Department of Defense has a higher figure. It said $184.8bn has been, external "appropriated", external for Operation Atlantic Resolve, the military response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Emma Pengelly
BBC Verify journalist

With the leaders of Ukraine and key European nations in Washington for talks with US President Donald Trump, both sides in the war continued their attacks overnight.

In Ukraine, a huge fire burned near the central city of Kremenchuk, with Poltava regional head Volodymyr Kohut saying the administrative buildings of a local energy infrastructure site were damaged.

We’ve verified a video from dawn this morning showing a large cloud of smoke over the city’s skyline.

We can’t see what is alight in the footage, but Nasa’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (Firms), which detects active hot spots from space, shows an area of heat over the Kremenchuk oil refinery.

Image source, NASA

We know where the video was filmed by matching residential blocks visible in the footage to Google Earth.

The sun is just beginning to rise in the east so the video was captured early in the morning.

Putting frames from the material into search engines shows it first appeared online this morning.

Across the border in Russia, Volgograd regional governor Andrey Bocharov is reported to have said drone debris caused a fire on the roof of a hospital and at an oil refinery in Volgograd city.

We’ve geolocated a picture of fires in the city, captured during the hours of darkness. The photo began being shared overnight.

Image source, Telegram

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Welcome to BBC Verify Live.

We've been checking videos since first thing this morning showing the aftermath of strikes in Ukraine and Russia - as attacks continued following talks in Washington on how to end the war.

Our team has checked and confirmed the location of strikes in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk and across the border at Volgograd in Russia.

Monitoring what people are posting on social media and messaging apps about the war helps the BBC report the latest developments in places where access for journalists is limited.

Elsewhere, an image of European leaders sitting on chairs waiting for their meeting with President Donald Trump yesterday might have popped up on your social feeds this morning. It's an AI fake - and we'll explain here how we know.

More on all those stories to come - plus a quick recap of what we fact-checked from Trump's news conference last night.