Is it true that the Ukrainian military recently burned the Dutch flag, confusing it with the Russian one?

In May 2022, social media users published a photo in which, allegedly, Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters were burning the Dutch flag instead of the Russian one. We have verified the accuracy of such posts.

On May 22 and 23, a photograph began to circulate on social networks in which men in camouflage and full-face masks were burning the blue, white and red flag of the Netherlands. At the same time, the captions accompanying the photo stated that the photo depicted Ukrainian soldiers who wanted to burn the white-blue-red flag of Russia, but confused the tricolors. This is probably due to the Fuck Russia caption at the bottom of the image.

Such publications can be found in fairly large communities on VKontakte, such as "Newspaper | Our Donbass" (515,000 subscribers at the time of writing the analysis), “Reports from the New Russia militia” (481,000 subscribers), "Donetsk DPR Russia news of Donbass New Russia" (268,000 subscribers), “Donetsk? lead the DPR | Reports from the front | Emergency" (126,000 subscribers) and "Army★Weapons★Russia" (115,000 subscribers). The image was also distributed on Telegram, in particular in the channels “Kadyrov Podolyaka Varlamov✔️” (274,000 subscribers), "Sexton" (177,000 subscribers) and "Yellow plums" (129,000 subscribers). The picture was also posted by users of other social networks, in particular Twitter And Facebook*.

The picture, actively distributed by Internet users in 2022, is actually a still from a video. He was posted back in January 2016 on the Patriot YouTube channel. This account has 18 subscribers, and the video entitled “Azov fighters’ appeal to the Netherlands before the referendum on the Ukraine-EU association” (“Appeal of Azov fighters to the Netherlands regarding the referendum on the Ukraine-EU association”) is the only one published on this channel. Nevertheless, in more than six years it received about 158,000 views.

Lasting two and a half minutes, the video opens with a screensaver with the logo of the Azov regiment. Next, six men in camouflage uniforms and with machine guns in their hands appear before the viewer. The person standing in the center speaks in Ukrainian that the heroes of the video are soldiers of the Azov volunteer regiment, and criticizes the authorities of the Netherlands, where for a long time not ratified Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union. “If the Netherlands does not approve the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU in the very near future, we will begin to act. In this case, the Dutch have no place on our land. We will do everything to prevent them from happening. We will find everyone who interferes with us. We will also operate on the territory of the Netherlands, our people are already there,” the Azov fighter allegedly threatens, giving the Dutch authorities a month to make a decision. Then the man on the right makes similar statements in English, the fighters pick up the Dutch flag and set it on fire.

The description of the video on the Patriot channel states that the original video was published on the Azov Media channel. However, when you click on the included YouTube link reportsthat the video is not available to viewers. The Azov Media channel really exists and belongs to the Ukrainian regiment of the same name. We were unable to find the video we were interested in on it. But two days after the “Patriot” video appeared on this channel published a refutation in which they called the video “a provocation and a low-quality fake.” Deputy commander of “Azov” Andrei Dyachenko specifically drew attention to the fact that the men captured in the recording are not holding real weapons, but airsoft ones. He also stressed that “Azov” “stood and will stand in defense of the pro-European position, and not threaten the civilians of Europe.”

Back in April 2016, the Bellingcat project (Russian authorities consider its media to be a foreign agent) released a detailed investigation into the origins of this video. In particular, journalists note that the link to the original video is missing from the largest web archives and search engine caches (it was probably published on a random channel and deleted very quickly just to get the link). In the screenshots, allegedly confirming that the video originally appeared on the Azov YouTube channel, Bellingcat found traces of editing. The accounts that distributed the video on social networks, as investigators found, are closely related to each other and regularly reposted or copied each other’s posts. Bellingcat also established a connection between these Internet users (real and fake) with the Internet Research Agency and the Federal News Agency, structures close to St. Petersburg businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin.

By the way, some of the VKontakte groups we mentioned at the very beginning of the analysis, which in 2022 published a photograph with captions about Ukrainians “confusing the Russian flag with the Dutch”, six years earlier shared the same video. The corresponding records have been preserved, for example, in public pages “Reports from the New Russia militia” And "Donetsk DPR Russia news of Donbass New Russia".

Thus, the image distributed by Internet users, contrary to their claims, has nothing to do with the events of 2022. This is a screenshot from a video from six years ago, which on an anonymous YouTube channel was passed off as a statement by fighters of the Azov regiment. The authenticity of the video with threats against the Netherlands was denied by both regiment representatives and journalists. Be that as it may, the men in the recording deliberately burn the Dutch flag, and do not confuse it with the Russian one.

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

Cover photo: YouTube screenshot

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Reuters. Fact Check — Screenshot of video showing soldiers burning Dutch flag predates Russian invasion of Ukraine
2. Open. Soldati ucraini bruciano la bandiera olandese scambiandola per quella russa? La doppia bufala
3. Is the video true about how Ukrainian refugees in Germany tried to burn the Russian flag and ended up burning down the house where they were housed?
4. Is it true that one of the “zigging” girls captured in the photo is the wife of the commander of the “Azov” regiment?
5. Is the Time cover about Vladimir Zelensky refusing to use the letters V and Z real?