At the end of July 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the Ukrainian military had set up a stronghold right in one of the schools in the city of Dnepr, and in addition, “they placed artillery and armored vehicles in the immediate vicinity of this educational institution.” The first part of this statement cannot be verified by fact-checking at this time. We decided to check out its second part.

The fact that Ukrainian artillery and armored vehicles were located near a school in the city of Dnieper, spoke Head of the National Defense Management Center of the Russian Federation, Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev. He gave both the school number and address - school No. 23 on Yavornitsky Avenue. He was also quoted as saying "Russian newspaper" And "Komsomolskaya Pravda" In the last two cases, the retelling of Mizintsev’s briefing was accompanied by a photograph of the Ministry of Defense, which, among other things, included a satellite image of school No. 23.

A rare case: each of us can open space photographs on the Yandex.Maps and Google Maps services and see something that really resembles a missile launcher, artillery pieces, the shadow of a tank and other suspicious-looking objects placed literally a few tens of meters from the school along the perimeter of a neighboring semicircular building:

The only problem is that this building is occupied by a diorama."Battle of the Dnieper", and the military equipment refers mainly to the period of the Great Patriotic War (let's be precise: there are both the later S-125 air defense system and a modernized howitzer from the First World War - it is the closest to the school). It cannot be ruled out that this equipment was installed by military personnel, but if so, then it was Soviet.

This diorama was opened in Dnepropetrovsk (the name of the city of Dnepr until 2016) in 1975 on the 30th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Soviet battle painters Nikolai But and Nikolai Ovechkin worked on the diorama itself, who four years later received the State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR for this project. Museum equipment was displayed near the building.

122mm howitzer model 1910–1930s. The building with windows in the background is school No. 23. The school is about 40 m away. Panorama author: ToXXuS

S-125 air defense missile launcher. In the center is the diorama building, to the left is school No. 23. To the right of the stairs is the same T-34-85 tank, the shadow of which is visible on the Yandex.Maps satellite image. Author of the panorama: ToXXuS

Memorial plaque on the diorama building. Author of the panorama: ToXXuS

A boy on a T-34–85 tank. Behind the BM-13 Katyusha tank based on the ZIS-151. Author of the panorama: ToXXuS

A little further from the school, also in the open air, there is an exhibition “Ways to Donbass"("On the Roads of Donbass") of the Dnieper Historical Museum: a checkpoint, entry signs riddled with gunshots (Volnovakha, Ilovaisk, Kramatorsk, Lugansk, Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Shchastya), torn off gun turrets, a destroyed bus stop, a burnt-out car, a shot "loaf" of an ambulance and other exhibits.

The checkpoint that opens the exhibition. Panorama author: Dmitriy_Malyshev

Entry signs. They are the ones in the photograph from space that vaguely resemble rockets laid out on the ground in a semicircle. Panorama author: Dmitriy_Malyshev

Part of the exhibition dedicated to health workers. Panorama author: Dmitriy_Malyshev

The gun turret of the T-64 tank and a view of the same turret from above. Panorama author: Dmitriy_Malyshev

Entrance sign to the city of Shchastya. Author of the panorama: ToXXuS

We cannot reliably determine whether Russian intelligence seriously mistook the museum exhibits for military equipment, but this has little effect on the verdict: apparently, the statement of the representative of the Ministry of Defense is not true.