Is it true that Ukrainian refugees killed a German volunteer who spoke to them in Russian?

Internet users are sharing a video on social networks in which a woman talks about a crime committed in Germany by several Ukrainians. We have verified the accuracy of such publications.

Starting from March 20, 2021, publications with identical text like “In the German city of Euskirchen, Ukrainians beat to death a 16-year-old volunteer who was helping refugees, appeared on VKontakte. The guy didn’t please because he spoke Russian” and some additions - for example, “the first victims have already begun” and “it’s a matter of time when in other countries where Ukrainian immigrants are most actively going now (Moldova, Romania, Poland, Latvia) it will move from verbal rudeness to real reprisals against people.” Such posts appeared, in particular, in public pages "Donbass today", "The Art of War", "Shark", "Bold Square", "Russia vs NATO" And "Bad News | Tough. Crimea" (each of them has between 25,000 and 655,000 subscribers). News share and users of other social networks.

Publications about the murder of a volunteer, published on VKontakte and other platforms, are often accompanied by a video in which the woman addresses “all Russian speakers in Germany.” She, citing her unnamed friend, says that at the train station in the city of Euskirchen near Cologne, a crowd of Ukrainians beat a certain 16-year-old boy named Daniel to a pulp. He fell into a coma and subsequently died in hospital, although the attackers were not brought to justice.

Note that in the video the woman does not say that the supposedly dead young man was a volunteer, the attackers were refugees, and not Ukrainians permanently residing in Germany, and the reason for the attack was Daniel’s use of the Russian language. These details were later added to the story of the beating by users of social networks and some media (for example, "Federal News Agency").

Euskirchen is a small town in western Germany, home to about 50,000 people. Criminal offenses committed in Euskirchen are investigated by the Bonn police. In a statement released late on March 20, the department reported, which “has no information about this brutal attack or the death of the teenager,” and announced that it had launched an investigation. The next day, department press secretary Simon Rott confirmed Deutsche Welle that "no such incident occurred."

Our fellow fact checkers found out that the original video, which became viral not only on the Russian-speaking Internet, but also on the German-speaking Internet, was taken from the TikTok account of a user under the nickname nataliabendet. Now the video has been removed from her profile, and on March 21 the woman published new video. In it, she said that she wanted to find out when Daniel’s funeral would take place, but “it turned out to be a fiction.” The user asked for forgiveness from everyone she misled: “I just believed, I didn’t need any facts, no photographs, no confirmation. <…> I want you not to make the same mistake as me. Don't trust anyone without confirmation."

Cover photo: REUTERS / Fabrizio Bensch

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Reuters. Fact Check-False claims that Ukrainians killed a teenage boy in Germany
2. Deutsche Welle. Fact check: Was a 16-year-old Russian beaten to death by a group of Ukrainians in Germany?
3. Bild. Es gibt weder Fall noch Opfer! Polizei: Video, das seit Sonntag kursiert, ist eine Fälschung ++ Urheberin entschuldigt sich
4. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Fake News Über Straftat: Den Mord an einem Russen in Euskirchen gab es nicht