Yes. Obviously that is false, but you still hear people say it.

That's amazing - not only because of the obvious history (Sputnik, Gagarin etc.) but also because of the fantastic ongoing success of their launch vehicles - Arianespace will be starting to launch medium loads from Guiana later this year using Soyuz launchers (in addition to the Ariane 5 heavy launcher and the Vega lightweight launcher):

http://www.arianespace.com/launch-services-soyuz/soyuz-intro...