On the eve of May 9, many Russian media and Telegram channels surprised their readers with the news: the Soviet Victory Banner was allegedly re-installed over the Reichstag building in the German capital. Several photos and videos also appeared on the Internet, which we verified for authenticity.
May 8, 1945 at 23:01 Central European Time (May 9 at 01:01 Moscow Time) entered due to the surrender of Nazi Germany. 78 years later, on the morning of May 8, 2023, reports appeared on the Internet that the Victory Banner was again flying over the Reichstag building in the center of the German capital. As they write in numerous Russian-language Telegram channels, news about this appeared on German social networks. The evidence was provided by four photographs and three videos in which one can actually see the Soviet banner, as if attached to the roof of the Reichstag. Moreover, German speech with an accent can be heard in the background of the video recordings. For example, on one of them there is a voice-over speaks: “Oh, did you see that? This is the Victory Banner. Yes, exactly, in the center of Berlin." In the newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets" wrotethat photographs and videos are also shared by numerous tourists. In some publications it saysthat, according to witnesses, the banner was erected by unknown activists, and somewhere approvedthat it was posted by the German authorities themselves.
In general, the news received phenomenal coverage on the RuNet. So, according to the service TGStat, In Telegram alone, the total coverage of posts about the Victory Banner that had reappeared on the Reichstag amounted to more than 10 million views. Channels wrote about the news “Mayoral Sobyanin"(749,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Live broadcast"(672,000), Colonelcassad (396,000), "Solovyov"(337,000), "Putin on Telegram"(272,000), "Pool N3"(227,000), "KB"(227,000), "Pozdnyakov 3.0"(220,000), "Rhymes and punches"(193,000), "Uncle Slava" (166,000), "First People's"(159,000), Voblya (157,000), "Bullet" (153,000), "Evil proof️"(137,000), "Sheikh Tamir"(134,000), "Ostashko! Important" (127,000) and "Ivan Utenkov"(112,000). Among the media publications noted “Ren-TV", NTV, "Ukraine.ru", RIA FAN, "Russia 1", Ura.ru, "Lenta.ru", PostNews, "Moscow 24", "Constantinople", "Arguments and facts"and also News.ru (they published an interview with a political scientist, according to whom tourists from Russia could have installed the banner). In addition, the news was widely spread on VKontakte (examples here, here And here).
“Verified” carefully studied the distributed photographs and videos, as well as the ways of their distribution, and came to the conclusion that on May 8, 2023, there was no Victory Banner over the Reichstag building, as indicated by several factors.
Russian media and social networks claim that the photographs and recordings were taken by tourists and Berlin residents who published them on their social networks. However, we checked hundreds of posts this month on Instagram* with various variations of hash and geotags related to the Reichstag, and did not find any original foreign publications about the raising of the Soviet flag. Moreover, on other platforms and sites we were also unable to find any eyewitness accounts or news reports from the German media about this resonant event. Of course, a number of publications on English, German And others languages are still available, but everything we found appeared on the Internet later than Russian-speaking ones, and often these are either publications from accounts affiliated with Russia or with link on Russian resources, or reprints Russian media. The earliest Russian-language publication that we have been able to track down is appeared in the Telegram channel “Russia Now” (332,000 views) at 10:26 Moscow time, but not all viral photos and videos are posted there. "Verified" repeatedly caught this channel is on dissemination disinformation And fakes.
“Verified” also noticed that in some photographs, puddles, cloudy weather and ongoing construction work using an excavator are visible in the background. We couldn’t find anything similar to the photo from May, but the situation and weather conditions were similar were observed around mid-April.
However, the strangest detail lies in the banner itself, or more precisely, in the arrangement of the hammer and sickle. Victory Banner - Russian state relic, which represents is the assault flag of the 150th Order of Kutuzov, II degree, Idritsa Rifle Division, hoisted over the Reichstag building on May 1, 1945. There's a hammer head on it directed towards the flagpole. In some viral videos and photos you can see the standard direction of the hammer, but in some materials the head of the hammer is directed away from the flagpole. It turns out that at least two different banners should have flown over the Reichstag building - with the correct placement of the hammer and sickle and with the wrong one, but there is not a single report of a second Soviet flag.
Later on May 8, our findings were confirmed by several resources. Firstly, during the day, the online publication “Polygon.media” reported, which contacted representatives of the Bundestag, who called the hoisting of the banner on May 8, 2023 a fake. “This has never happened in the German Bundestag,” the press service said in response.
Later, a refutation of viral publications about the Victory Banner raised over the Reichstag appeared on the website of the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. They also published a response from a representative of the press service of the German parliament: “No, this is not true. We have three German flags and one EU flag on the Reichstag.” Same answer shared newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, but added: “As it turned out, these [viral] shots had nothing to do with today.” (Note that some other The media also issued refutations.) The absence of the Victory Banner and the presence of the German and EU flags was confirmed by a RIA Novosti correspondent, who also noted that there were several inconsistencies in the materials distributed on the Internet. For example, the weather conditions shown in the photos and videos do not correspond to those observed in Berlin on May 8. Also in place visited correspondents of the OstWest TV channel did not even see the Soviet banner over the Reichstag.
Finally, last night my investigation presented German fact checkers from the dpa project. They said that the Bundestag administration is not aware of a single incident with such a flag. “There, as usual, only four towers fly the German and European flags,” the spokesman explained in response to a dpa request. In addition, our German colleagues claim that the weather and vegetation depicted on the distributed materials do not correspond current conditions. For example, it shows a gray and cloudy sky, although on May 8 in the center of Berlin the weather was clear and sunny with a blue sky and the trees were more foliage. The dpa editors noticed another strange detail: in one of the videos, which was allegedly filmed in the morning, the sun shines on the western facade of the Reichstag building, although this is only possible in the afternoon.
Thus, the German authorities and journalists who visited the site deny that on May 8, 2023, anyone hoisted the Victory Banner on the Reichstag building. No world or German media wrote anything about this event, and the evidence is provided by several photos and videos that were first seen on the RuNet. Moreover, some of them show the wrong banner, and the weather does not correspond to what it was on May 8 in the center of Berlin. All these arguments allow us to confidently say that the flag was added to photographs and videos digitally.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: social networks
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