At the end of July 2022, a photograph of a newspaper circulated on social networks, the article in which was entitled “Vladimir Zelensky wants to return Ukraine to Poland.” We have verified the accuracy of such publications.

Internet users shared a photo of the front page of the newspaper Dziennik Wschodni (“Eastern Daily”) dated July 19, 2022. Under the title of the material and the subtitle there is a photograph of Vladimir Zelensky and his Polish colleague Andrzej Duda. A writer spoke about an allegedly headline-grabbing Polish media publication Zakhar Prilepin (232,000 subscribers at the time of writing this analysis) and TV presenter Artyom Sheinin (118,000), as well as channels "Signal" (695,000), "Ne.Sugar" (520,000 subscribers), "Format 21" (422,000) and “DPR? info??” (281,000).

On their pages on VKontakte they spoke about the first page in the newspaper Dziennik Wschodni "Federal News Agency" and online edition "Russian Spring". On the same social network, the news was spread by about two dozen public pages, including "Donetsk DPR news Donbass Russia Novorossiya" (281,000 subscribers), "Armed Forces of New Russia (VSN)" (181,000) and "Newspaper "Spetsnaz of Russia" and magazine "Razvedchik"" (100,000). The image was also published in Facebook* And Twitter.

A now viral photo of the front page of a Polish newspaper reveals a few oddities. Although the issue was published on July 19, for some reason it used a photograph made during Duda's visit to Kyiv two months earlier. However, it can be assumed that the photo editor simply did not find a more suitable illustration.

However, the problems with the text itself are much more serious. For example, at the end of the second column we see a complete sentence, while the third begins with a small letter. The enlarged and highlighted fragment in the fifth column even reads: “Those who already earn a lot thanks to their high positions receive significant bonuses, which from the point of view of workers violates social justice.” This phrase seems to have nothing to do with the note about geopolitics and changing state borders.

Such blunders explained editorial staff of Dziennik Wschodni - the fact is that the front page of the July 19 issue simply looked different. The publication reported that that issue of the newspaper began with a material entitled “For some thousands, for others nothing. How does the marshal reward? On the same day the text of this article appeared and on the newspaper's website. It was definitely not posted retroactively - this confirm Internet Archive data.

The publication, featured on the front page of this issue of Dziennik Wschodni, was dedicated to the bonuses that, in addition to salaries, officials in the leadership of the Lublin Voivodeship received (a unit of administrative-territorial division of Poland. - Ed.). In this context, the quote highlighted in red about bonuses for people with high salaries looks much more appropriate.

The editors of Dziennik Wschodni also separately emphasized that the photograph added during editing was not taken by their correspondent, so they could not use it in print - this would be a violation of copyright.

Apparently, the edited photograph became popular very quickly - it began to be published in large Telegram channels on the afternoon of July 27, and the earliest such post on social networks was discovered fact checkers from AFP, appeared about a day earlier. Our colleagues cite as a primary source publication in the group “Current news in Rus' - Slavic brotherhood” on VKontakte. We could not find any earlier publications using the altered front page of the Polish newspaper.

Thus, an edited photo was passed off as a real page of the Polish publication on social networks, which has nothing to do with the real issue of Dziennik Wschodni dated July 19, 2022. The authors of the fake replaced the headline, photograph and about a third of the article, which did not correspond to the remaining original text. The edited image appeared on VKontakte and Telegram about a week after the publication of the newspaper.

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: Office of the President of Ukraine