With news organizations reporting on President Joe Biden’s visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, highlighting a blaring air raid siren while he was there, right-wing media fabricated a conspiracy narrative that the siren was staged. In fact, multiple legitimate news organizations reported that the siren sounded because a Russian fighter jet was detected taking off in Belarus during Biden’s visit.

On February 20, Biden appeared in Kyiv as part of a secretive trip to the active war zone, which took the White House months to plan. During the visit, which Russia was notified about for “deconfliction purposes,” Biden met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and they visited the gold-domed St. Michael’s Cathedral. As they left the historic building, an air raid siren began sounding in Kyiv, a moment shared by news organizations in videos and headlines.

Multiple news organizations reported that the air raid siren was triggered by a Russian fighter jet taking off from an airfield in neighboring Belarus during Biden’s visit. (Belarus is a close ally of Russia and has provided assistance and support throughout the war in Ukraine, allowing Russian military equipment and personnel to be based at Belarussian facilities and staged along that nation's border with Ukraine.) The New York Times further explained that “a missile from a MIG fired from Belarus can hit a target in Kyiv in under 20 minutes.” And the Kyiv Independent reported that the sirens sounded across Ukraine, not just in Kyiv.

Biden's historic trip to Ukraine was the first visit by a sitting American president to an active warzone that was not fully controlled by the U.S. military since the Civil War, but right-wing media were unable to accept the significance, and quickly spun a conspiracy theory that the air raid sirens were staged by Biden or Zelensky to add drama to the visit. Most of these right-wing media figures and outlets cited a very short clip of a CNN reporter’s words that he had not heard sirens for “the past five days” until Biden’s visit, which was posted to Twitter by an analyst from right-wing Newsbusters. But these comments were taken out of context: Just minutes earlier, CNN’s Clarissa Ward explained that the siren “was allegedly due to MiG activity over Belarus.” And Mediaite reported that several Fox hosts who declared that the air raid sirens to be staged were ignoring their network’s own reporters, who said earlier in the day that “the risk was real.” In reality, Kyiv remains under daily threat of bombardment from Russian long-range missiles.

Despite these facts, right-wing media figures and outlets declared the air raid sirens were faked:

• Fox News host Jesse Watters: “So what’s with the air raid sirens? Even Reuters is saying there was zero reports of Russian missiles while Biden was there. Zero. So no missiles, no tank fire, not even a weather balloon flying towards Kyiv when Biden was there, but someone was blasting air raid sirens like a soundtrack. The media loved it.”
• Watters: “There was no incoming fire from Russia.”
• Fox host Tucker Carlson: “Note the air raid sirens in the background. What’s strange is there didn’t seem to be any air raids in Kyiv this morning, we checked. There were just air raid sirens at precisely the moment that Joe Biden appeared for a photo op.”
• Fox contributor Charlie Hurt: “It’s pretty clear that they ginned up the air raid sirens for the moment that Joe Biden walks out, even though they had not been going off for days, and nobody had — there was no reason for the sirens to be going off. It’s all a staged optical campaign event for Joe Biden.”
• OAN host Addison Smith: “So it was scheduled, in other words. It was all part of a show.”
• Newsmax host Chris Salcedo: The air raid sirens were “special effects” to “dress up” Biden’s visit to Kyiv.
• Fox host Mark Levin: “Nobody was firing on Kyiv. Why do you think the Russians were given a heads-up, America? Why do you think no missiles landed in Kyiv when Biden was there? Why did the sirens go off at exactly the moment the guy’s walking through the town square with Zelensky? Do they even seem fazed by it? Does the Secret Service seem fazed by it? Nobody seems fazed by it. I’m just saying, I’d say, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here and duck,’ and so would everybody else. And the Secret Service would be grabbing Biden by the arm and dragging him somewhere. There were no attacks on Kyiv, nothing. Prior to that siren, you could hear the sparrows sing, assuming they have sparrows.”
• Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro: “Oh weird, weird. Almost as though the air raid sirens were kind of staged. Almost as though. That's weird, is it not?”
• Right-wing talk show host Dave Rubin sarcastically said of the air raid sirens: “Yeah, that — that feels real. That doesn't feel staged. Am I nuts?”
• Newsmax host Benny Johnson: “Well, it's verifiably, false, actually. And you don't have to go and check-in Infowars, Alex Jones. You don't have to go in and check on some random Twitter account. Just go over to Reuters’ verified Twitter handle. Reuters had a reporter there on the ground, and they said air raid sirens blared across the capital. But there were no reports of Russian missiles or air strikes in the air, but it gets worse. You can go over to CNN’s broadcasting.”
• Right-wing social media commentary website Twitchy: “Biden & Zelenskyy strolled Kyiv streets while air raid sirens blared and it was totally not staged”
• Twitchy: “Reporter in Kyiv, Ukraine hadn’t heard any air raid sirens for 5 days UNTIL…”
• RedState.com: “CNN and Reuters Just Let Slip a Small Problem With Those Air Raid Sirens During Biden's Ukraine Visit.”
• Right-wing writer Paul Sperry: “Will Biden’s Ukraine Trip, Featuring False Air-Raid Sirens, Inspire Even More Tall Tales of Stolen Valor from the Career, Serial Fabulist?”
• Blaze Media: “CNN reporter spills the beans, reveals air sirens only blared when Biden visited Kyiv: 'Life is relatively normal here.'”
• Trump election lies lawyer Lin Wood: “DON’T PANIC!!! This warning siren in the Ukraine is a FALSE alarm designed to warn others that FAKES are in the vicinity!!! Just sayin.’”