In May 2022, the image of girls with their hands raised upside down became viral. It is claimed that among them Katerina Prokopenko, the wife of one of the leaders of the Azov regiment. We checked the reliability of such publications.
On May 11, 2022, during the communication of Pope with the Roman with those who came to St. Peter Pontiff Square within a few minutes He said With Katerina Prokopenko and Yulia Fedosyuk - the wives of the fighters of the Ukrainian Regiment of Azov, who were at that moment in the territory of the Azovstal plant in Mariupol. Women asked Francis to transport the fighters remaining on the territory of the enterprise to a third country and negotiate with the President of Russia.
The next day, Russian television channel "Star" Published On your website, the material under the heading of “supporters of Nazism: what is known about the Azov fighters met with the pope of the Roman wives. The author of the note Timur Sherzad claims: “The wives of the fighters of the Azov nationalist battalion, who were accepted by Pope Francis, themselves sympathize with the ideas of Nazism and called for murders on social networks, while one of the girls was Katerina Prokopenko, the wife of Azov Prokopenko commander. The girl not only chose a radical in the life satellites, but also openly demonstrated her attitude to the ideas of nationalism. The network has already found her early photographs, where she poses, throwing up her right hand. ”
The photo attached as evidence was published on May 12 and 13 other media - for example, the publication Readovka On VKontakte. The image was spread by other publics in this social network, in particular "Summarians from the militia of New Russia" (480,000 subscribers) and "Donetsk DPR Russia News of the Donbass of Novorossia" (264,000 subscribers). In your Telegram channel Published The head of the Goskosmos State Corporation Dmitry Rogozin. The assertion that Katerina Prokopenko is captured in the photograph was also spread abroad - so, the corresponding posts can be found on Twitter on English And French languages.
To begin with, neither the media, nor the channels in Telegram, nor publics on VKontakte lead as evidence of the link directly to the social networks of Katerina Prokopenko or the screenshots of her publications. In particular, the Zvezda TV channel refers to the post of Telegram channel "Urgently, now" (its authors did not indicate their sources). We could not find the accounts of Katerina Prokopenko in social networks to check the presence on these pages of the corresponding picture.
The photograph used by the Russian media and Telegram channels have been circulating on the Internet for a long time. For example, in 2015, an edited version of the image (on T -shirts painted Nazi symbols and a portrait of Hitler) Published On forums and in social networks with signatures like “Please, get acquainted with the new European country - Ukraine” and “Modern Banderacy in Ukraine”. Even then, our colleagues from the Finnish edition Yle They paid attention Readers that the photo is used to misinform Internet users.
In fact, the image appeared long before 2015. Its earliest use, an example of which discovered The factor from the Italian Facta project dates from September 2010. Then a demotivator on the basis of this photo appeared on the Demotivators.ru website. We were also able to detect Demotivator On the site ucrazy.ru, published in February of the same year.
Is it possible that in a photo taken about 12 years ago, Katerina Prokopenko is depicted? According to data France 24 And Corriere Della Serra, now a girl is 27 years old, that is, in 2010 she was a 15-year-old teenager. Moreover, in the photo with a considerable probability, girls from Poland are captured, and this conclusion can be drawn not only because of the Polish flag on the girl’s t-shirt on the left. Until 2014, the image often Published On the Polish sites (this is evidenced by the appropriate watermarks), using the phrases “Polish schoolgirls” and “Polish girls” in the signatures.
Thus, the assertion that the girl and Katerina Prokopenko depicted in the photo are the same person is based solely on the subjective assessment of external similarity. Moreover, there is no unambiguous objective evidence in support of this version. To doubt the fidelity of the theses of the “stars” and other media allows the “age” of the picture and the fact that in the early 2010s the photograph was associated with Poland, and not with Ukraine.
This is not for sure
- Facta. La ragazza di questa foto non è moglie di un Soldato del Battaglione azov
- Is it true that Easter cakes were sold in Ukrainian stores with the symbols of the Azov regiment?
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