At the end of June 2022, a photograph allegedly depicting a Ukrainian prisoner with Nazi symbols on his body circulated across the media and social networks. We checked whether this description of the photo corresponds to reality.

The full description looks like this: “Not a people, but a beast, a boor, a wild horde. In the photo you can see how a military doctor examines a guy whose body is covered with swastikas. The caption reads: "Donetsk. Medical examination of a prisoner." And so there is no fascism in/on the Outskirts.”

The photo with this comment was widely circulated on Telegram, where on June 27 it was distributed by the channel "Shkvarka News". The post had been viewed by 883,000 users as of July 8. The next day, a member of the Central Council of the party “A Just Russia - Patriots - For Truth” made an identical publication on his channel. Nikolay Starikov. The publication also appeared on a popular German-language channel Russlander & Friends. The news about this was spread by "Gazeta.ru".

Among the hundreds of users who left their comments under the publications, there were those who found the photo familiar. Someone was able to remember how in 2014 the picture was already presented as an illustration of recruitment into the Ukrainian army...

...or to the National Guard of Ukraine.

However, this is not all. Polish users find out in photography, recruitment is already in your army. But the readers of the 2010 article on the site "Kasparov.ru" They will say that we are facing a medical examination in a Russian pre-trial detention center. The latter will be closest to the truth. The earliest dating of a photograph on the Internet dates back to 2005 - that’s when, according to description in the Getty Images photo bank, a photograph was taken, the rights to which are owned by a famous photographer Vladimir Drachev and AFP. The text under the photo reads: “Mogilev, Belarus. June 22, 2005. A Belarusian prison doctor examines a prisoner covered in Nazi tattoos at Prison No. 15 in the city of Mogilev, about 200 km from Minsk. About 4,000 prisoners were released under an amnesty announced to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II [in fact, Great Patriotic War — Author’s note], and about 5000 more will be released within one year.”

In the same database you can see another one photograph the same Belarusian prisoner, from a different angle. Thus, a photograph taken 17 years ago in one of the Belarusian prisons was passed off on the Internet over the years as a completely different image, most often as a photograph of Ukrainian soldiers or recruits.

Cover image: Telegram channel “Shkvarka News”.