In January 2023, reports appeared on the Web that at the Stuttgart airport at the electronic scoreboard, a call to the German authorities not to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine. We checked this news for reliability.
In numerous Internet publications, the news is reinforced with a photograph that states, one of the premises at the Stuttgart airport is captured, where the following announcement appeared on the screen against the background of the German flag: “Let the“ leopards ”remain in Germany! Stop the Bundeswehr's robbery! ” It is understood that this statement expresses the position of many residents of the country on the transfer of tanks to Ukraine.
A viral picture appeared in many Telegram channels, among which "Ne. Sahar"(221,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Voblya (169,000), "Summarians of Yuri Podolyaki"(150 000),"Yakov Kedmi"(79,000),"Military observer"(60 000), Rogandar News (56,000), "Echo of war"(35,000),"Mikhalkov in Telegram"(34,000),"Sleeve"(14,000), Pravda.ru (10,000) and others. Also, this photo can be found on Twitter (examples here, here, here And here), "VKontakte" (here, here And here) and on Reddit.
To begin with, we were convinced that the distributed photo is really taken in the departure hall of the Stuttgart airport - on the network you can find many pictures The same place with the same staircase, escalator and monitor.
Then we looked for publications in foreign media, which would mention the presence of such banners at the German airport or a viral picture was given, but could not find anything. Moreover, we did not manage to find any other photograph from the Stuttgart airport in social networks, where the same screen was captured with a call to the German authorities, as in a viral photo, neither in geotags, nor in hashtags, nor by keywords. This seems extremely unlikely, given how wide It is discussed The topic of German tanks inside and outside the Federal Republic of Germany and the fact that the Stuttgart airport is one of the largest in Germany (7 million passengers for 2022).
“Verified” applied for a commentary on the airport employees. Under one of the English -speaking tweets with a viral photo, we saved the verified Flughafen Stuttgart account (“Airport Stutgart”) and asked whether the photo from the post is true or it was fake. Us They answeredthat the picture is falsified. Our colleagues from the Ukrainian factory project Stopfake sent a request press service Stuttgart airport and received a response from Beat Schleicher, senior media relations expert. According to her, the viral photo was mounted: “Screens that can be seen in the photographs from the posts on Facebook*translate only commercial commercials or periodic notifications for passengers about security checks or other operational changes.”
Unfortunately, the original unchanged photo that became the basis of fake could not find the original. We assume that the initial picture could not be taken in 2023 or even in 2022. If you pay attention to the right edge of the viral photograph, you can notice a small fragment of a certain sign. With a large approximation and change in the saturation of the image, it is clear that it is divided into four parts: three black and one blue (and the order is like this: black, black, blue, black). By comparing the viral photo with other pictures taken at different times, we found that the signs are located there. However, in 2022 they looked different: in January last year, only a blue pointer hung there, then one black was added from below. And four signs with the order of colors, as in a viral photo, hung much earlier. We failed to find fresh photos in January 2023.
The earliest publication of those we saw was found by keywords in the Telegram channel "Sexton"(87,000 views). It states that the photo was sent by an anonymous subscriber, and the post itself was published on January 20, 2023 at 17:23 Moscow time. “From subscribers. In Germany, banners appeared at the airport of Stuttgart, on which they call not to give “leopards” to Ukraine. Filmed himself. They made it under Ramstein, I just say it ” - this is how the text of the recording begins. The posts were referred to the international conferences of the Allies of Ukraine at the Ramstein air base, the last of which took place January 20, 2023.
In the analysis of the “tested”, the “Ponomar” channel is not the first time. For example, he distributed An inaccurate message that the Ukrainian military burned the Dutch flag, confusing it with the Russian, issued quote Joe Biden from a satirical publication for the true statement of the American president and Share The fake cover of the Spanish satirical magazine El Jueves with a caricature on Polish President Andrzej Dudu. Moreover, the “sexton” is not the first time becoming the primary source of fakes: in August last year, a false Screenshot tweet of the former Minister of Defense of Japan and fake photo Estonian form for traveling abroad. In both cases, as this time, it was clarified that the materials allegedly sent the subscribers of the "sewn".
Approximately at the same time, that the photograph supposedly from the Stuttgart Airport, on the network, distributed a picture of the tablet in the Berlin Zoo, where the workers allegedly asked the visitors not to feed the leopards with “empty conversations of Zelensky”, because the animals may feel sick. We Checked The authenticity of the photo, and it also turned out to be fake.
*Russian authorities They think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns social networks Instagram and Facebook, an extremist organization, its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Photo on the cover: social networks
Fake
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