In May 2023, a photo from the airport went viral, allegedly showing the wife of Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov leaving Russia. We checked whether this frame was interpreted correctly on social networks.

Reports about the emigration of Marina Gladkova appeared on May 22 and 23 against the background approach to the Belgorod region of sabotage groups of the Legion "Freedom of Russia" and the "Russian Volunteer Corps", the second in March participated in similar foray into the Bryansk region. As evidence, a photograph from a certain airport was attached to the posts. It is alleged that the woman standing half-turned and talking on the phone on the right side of the frame is the wife of Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. With similar captions, the photo was widely circulated on social networks. In the Telegram channel “Ukraine now: news, war, Russia” post dialed 494,000 views at the time of writing this analysis, in channel "Ukraine 24/7" - 208,000, in channel Pravda Gerashchenko - 173,000. Viral posts on Facebook and Twitter were accompanied by the captions “run, darlings" And "rats are fleeing the ship».

One of the caption options for the shared photo

The authors of the publications about the wife of the Belgorod governor at the airport do not specify when and where exactly the photo was taken. At the same time, there are enough details in the photo to find its original source. In the upper left corner you can see an advertising screen with part of the slogan (you can distinguish the words “element” and “recreation”), a fragment logo Azur charter airline, check-in counter, distinctive floor pattern and metal structures. Searching for the phrase “Azur element of your holiday” leads to commercial airline, and a reverse photo search on Google leads to an uncropped and higher-quality photo from February 2, 2023.

The photo is posted on the website of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR) as an illustration to news about the six millionth passenger of Azur Airlines - it is reported that the photo was taken at Vnukovo airport. The exact time of shooting (or sending) of the file is also preserved in the file name.

Published publicly available photographs of the interior of Vnukovo Airport confirm that the photograph was taken there: the details of the architectural structure and design can be verified.

It is very difficult to draw unambiguous conclusions about the similarity of the woman in the photo with Marina Gladkova - she stands half-turned, part of her face is covered by her smartphone, and the image quality is not very high. The PimEye facial recognition service was unable to determine who exactly was captured in the viral photo.

The fact-checking resource Lead Stories conducted its own research and noted, that the governor’s wife and the woman in the frame do not have the same haircut, at least. May 21 Gladkov posted in her VKontakte account there are photos and videos with her wife - it is clear that Gladkova’s hair is shorter than that of the woman in the shot from Vnukovo.

On Twitter, apparently, the distortion went viral after tweet in English, published on May 22 at 18:11 Moscow time. The most likely original source was A post from the channel “Ukraine⚡️Noviny⚡️Vіyna” published on Telegram two hours earlier. We were unable to find the viral photo in earlier publications, and many channels deleted posts with the analyzed photo.

Thus, the message about the “running wife of Governor Gladkov”, which was widely circulated on social networks, is illustrated by a photograph that was almost four months old, and the statement that the photo shows Marina Gladkova is not confirmed by analysis of the photographs.