Is it true that Ukraine published a textbook on the country’s history with caricatures of Zelensky on the cover?

In mid-May 2023, a photo appeared on the Internet allegedly showing a children's textbook on the history of Ukraine, on the cover of which the country's president is presented in the image of people from different eras. We checked if this book is real.

The photo shows someone holding a book with an orange cover that reads: “History of Ukraine for children. From primitive times to the present day." According to a caption popular on social media, the four images depict “the evolution from Zelensky the monkey to Zelensky in a suit” (apparently, Zelensky as a knight and an astronaut are shown between them). The authors of some publications already based on one cover are indignant what Ukrainian children are supposedly being taught, and applaud compiler of illustrations, and often add: “Did you think they were joking about “dug up the Black Sea”? No matter how it is, just wait, they will trace their ancestry back to some aliens.” Sometimes on social networks emphasizethat this is “not photoshop”.

Similar posts were distributed across Telegram channels, including “Bullet"(176,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Sheikh Tamir"(140,000), "Kot Kostyan - official channel"(101,000), "Ukraine.ru"(85,000), Putin TG Team (80,000), "Rita Ebzeeva"(78,000), "Truth of Russia"(63,000), "Summary" (20,000) and "Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation"(13,000). There is a viral photo of a textbook on some newswebsites And forums, on LiveJournal, on Twitter (as on Russian, and on English languages), "Odnoklassniki" and "VKontakte" (here, here, here, here And here).

“Verified” could not find a textbook with the same cover either on book sales sites or in official Ukrainian sources. There are publications with similar names, but their title illustrations are completely different from the one in the viral photo. In addition, at the bottom of the cover there is a logo and the signature “Dityachi Knigi” (“Children’s Books”), which most likely should indicate the publishing house, but we could not find any information about it in open sources. It turns out that the existence of such a children's textbook is confirmed by only one photograph, and the book is shown closed.

Establishing an unambiguous source of a viral image is quite difficult due to the many different wordings of the caption. The earliest appearance of the photo that Verified was able to track was took place in the Russian-language Telegram channel Gury__mood (12,000 views) on May 12 at 13:05 Moscow time. At the same time, publication represents is a repost from a certain user named Arthur Novikov (his profile is hidden). Four minutes later, a picture with a similar caption was published by the channels “Odessa public television Z" (6000) and "Shaman Rahu"(3000), which has previously been featured in analyzes “Checked” as distributor And creator fake content.

In the process of searching for the original source, we came across comments under one of posts on VKontakte for May 12, where the user named a photograph of a Ukrainian textbook using Photoshop and attached several similar photos in which a person in the same pose and the same clothes is holding other books.

Using a reverse image search, “Verified” found that the source of the image was posted on many sites for creating photo layouts, both paid and free (examples here, here, here, here or here). That is, any user can download a layout file, add the concept of their book cover there and see how this image will look on the finished product - in this case, in the hands of a girl.

Thus, if this Ukrainian history textbook with caricatures of Vladimir Zelensky existed in reality, then there would be at least one real photo or mention of it on the Internet, and not a layout that could be created by any Internet user who owns Photoshop.

Cover photo: social networks

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

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