At the end of May 2023, a photograph allegedly taken in one of the schools in Ukraine appeared on the Internet. It shows that on the wall next to the portrait of the Ukrainian president there is a photograph of the American leader. Social networks claim that this is proof that the country has become a colony of the United States. We verified the authenticity of the viral photo.
The most common caption for this photo is: “Portraits in the office of the headmaster of a school of proud and independent Ukraine. Zaporozhye". The photo shows a wall on which two letters decorated with the Ukrainian coat of arms hang, and above them, on the same level, are portraits of Joe Biden and Vladimir Zelensky. Sometimes publications are supplemented with ironic and/or offensive comments, for example, “everything is feng shui - a white owner and a local Gauleiter,” “a white planter and a small-town overseer,” “colonialism in its purest form,” or “if we were the director, we would hang Biden’s portrait a little higher.”
Similar posts are posted in Telegram channels Zergulio (149,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), “Ukraine.ru"(97,000), "Banned"(62,000), "DPR 🅉 Info 🇷🇺"(46,000), Putin TG Team (60,000), "Urgent and accurate"(28,000), "ZhS Premium"(23,000), Zanoza (14,000), "Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation" (12,000) and "Guard"(7000) - most of them were mentioned in the "Verified" analyzes in connection with the dissemination of fake information, and some more than once became its primary sources. The photograph is also found in public pages and on the personal pages of VKontakte users (examples here, here, here And here), Twitter (here, here, here And here) and on some news websites.
The spread of the image began in the pro-Russian Telegram segment on May 29, 2023. Thus, the earliest publication that “Verified” could find was posted at 12:48 Moscow time in a small channel "South Live"(8400 subscribers at the time of writing this analysis, 2000 views), which has already mentioned in rebuttals "Verified". The post included the hashtag #writes by subscriber. On the same day, similar posts with the same photo allegedly from a subscriber from Zaporozhye appeared in the channels “Shaman Rahu"(2600 views) and Tarik_news (5300), and these are the constant heroes of our texts. For example, "Shaman Rahu" more than once published fake materials marked “from subscribers” and shared strangers incorrect publications. The same applies to Tarik_news: recently there published a fake photo from a Turkish restaurant, also allegedly sent by subscribers, and previously posted a edited video with Zelensky's speech, edited photo from the Berlin Zoo and snapshot, allegedly taken on the New York subway. "Verified" studied other publications "Yuga Live" and also found others among them refuted us fakes.
As was the case with previous posts from subscribers, which ultimately turned out to be fakes, the new photo was not accompanied by almost any details: neither the school number, nor the name of the director, nor the date of shooting were indicated. There are also no visual cues in the photo itself to help identify where the photo was taken. There is no information about the shooting location in the file metadata. Creating this kind of uninformative photo without distinctive features is one of the favorite methods of fake authors. We have already analyzed a number of similar messages based on photographs in front of a door, wall or fence on which advertisements were allegedly hung Kyiv clinic, Texas Zoo, New York subway, Hamburg Library, and also laboratories And clinics in Lviv.
Since sometimes authors use content they found on the Internet to create fake materials, Verified tried to find the original images of the letters imprinted on the wall, and we succeeded. Moreover, they were posted on one resource - the Blogger blog platform.
So, the letter on the left was handed over in 2005, to Galina Peresunko, 7th grade class teacher of the Podlesnenskaya secondary school - as of March 2015, she worked in the same institution deputy director of educational work and a teacher of the Ukrainian language. The seal indicates that the educational institution located in the Kirovograd region.
Second certificate in 2009 received Vera Belkina - teacher English language of the Lviv Lyceum of Management, which, accordingly, located in the Lviv region. A logical question arises: why are there two certificates hanging on the wall of the supposed director of the Zaporozhye school, awarded in different years and to different people who worked in other regions of the country?
Thus, the publications we analyze correspond to several parameters at once, according to which a verdict of “fake” can be made. Firstly, the photo began to spread in a network of Telegram channels that were repeatedly caught in lies. Secondly, the photo was allegedly sent by an anonymous subscriber who did not provide any additional details. Thirdly, the certificates shown in the photograph can be found on the Internet in the public domain - they were received by different people in different regions of Ukraine in different years.
Cover photo: social networks
Fake
- Is it true that Ukraine published a textbook on the country’s history with caricatures of Zelensky on the cover?
- Is the photo in which Biden put his hand on Zelensky’s buttocks true?
- Is it true that in Lviv schoolchildren lined up in the shape of a swastika on Hitler’s birthday?
- Is it true that textbooks found in a Ukrainian school promote Nazism?
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