Fact Check: Video Does NOT Show EU Parliament Standing Ovation For US Decision To Allow Ukraine To Strike Deep Into Russia

Does a video show members of the European Parliament giving a standing ovation to the U.S. decision to permit Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia with U.S.-supplied weapons? No, that’s not true: The post’s caption mislabels the content of a video shared online. The video showed members of the EU parliament clapping before and after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address — not in response to any particular thing that he said.

The story appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, where it was published on November 20, 2024. It opened:

Applause and standing ovation from European Parliament for approval to launch American missiles from Ukraine to Russia.

This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:

(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Nov 27 16:35:01 2024 UTC)

The 12-second video showed members of the European Parliament rising to applaud. Their computer screens, visible in the footage, read, “Address of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine,” as he appeared on the larger monitor in the chamber.

The clip was first published (archived here) on X on November 19, 2024, by Tomasz Froelich (archived here), a member of the Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) elected to the European Parliament. His post mentioned both applause and “American missiles” but he did not say that the applause was meant to celebrate the U.S. decision.

On Novembe 19, 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a speech (archived here) before this legislative body to mark 1,000 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

In his remarks, Zelenskyy did not mention the United States or Biden and did not explicitly refer to the decision to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied weapons to hit targets deep inside Russian territory, a decision that had been reported two days earlier (archived here).

Zelenskyy used the word “missile” once, as seen in both the video (archived here) on the website of the European Parliament and the transcript of his remarks (archived here) on Zelenskyy’s official presidential website:

(Source: president.gov.ua screenshot taken on Wed Nov 27 16:56:04 2024 UTC)

Zelenskyy’s entire speech went uninterrupted, and there was no applause immediately after he said what the screenshot above shows. As the video of his remarks demonstrates, EU parliament members started clapping only when the Ukrainian president finished the address.

Zelenskyy also received a standing ovation before the speech, which is seen in another video posted by the European Parliament on YouTube and reflected in the transcript (archived here) of the proceedings on the website of the European Parliament.

Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims mentioning Zelenskyy can be found here. Fact checks about the Russian-Ukrainian war are here.