In June 2023, covers of the newspaper Handelsblatt and the satirical magazine El Jueves, which ridiculed the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, went viral on the Internet. We decided to check if these are real caricatures.
German newspaper Handelsblatt
On June 22, a cover of an alleged Handelsblatt newspaper appeared on the Internet. The artist depicted a German Leopard tank crashing into a wall. Above the drawing is written: “This is not a counter-offensive, this is a bloody crash test.” Obviously, we are talking about Leopard tanks knocked out during the Ukrainian counteroffensive - about this, in particular, spoke Russian President Vladimir Putin, and following his statement, Russian state media began to assert, that “Germany is shocked by the losses and is looking for a way to retreat.” This supposedly new cover was reported, among others, by Telegram channels “Dmitry Vasilets"(214,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Staff Correspondent"(108,000), "Ostashko! Important" (105,000) and "What happened?» (107,000)
The top left corner of the cover states that this is issue #119 for June 23/24/25, 2023 (that is, the Friday issue of June 23, which also covers the weekend). The newspaper with this number actually came out on June 23; it can be found in electronic form in online archive Handelsblatt. However, the cover of this edition looks different.
Issues of Handelsblatt with full-length covers, where the illustration takes up the entire page, usually go out on Fridays. But it was June 23 that became an exception; the German edition was published in the form usual for other days.
There are also technical errors made by the authors. previous fake Handelsblatt cover that spread online in April. On the left are two barcodes. The first applies to the publication as a whole, it is always the same. The second one encodes a specific issue. In the real No. 119, the numbers are 50025, in the fake one - 50024. The numbers in the distributed image are taken from another Friday issue - No. 114 dated June 16, 2023.
The original source of the fake was the Telegram channel “Before everyone else. Well almost. Special Operation" where fast with the cover appeared on June 22 at 11:25 Moscow time (11,000 views). It is this Telegram channel that has most often become the primary source of distribution of fake covers in recent months. Of the 22 similar images analyzed by “Verified” in 2023, in 17 cases it was the channel “Before everyone else” who was the first to write about it. Well almost. Special operation."
Spanish magazine El Jueves
On July 3, another viral image appeared about the Ukrainian counteroffensive, this time attributed to the Spanish satirical magazine El Jueves. In the cartoon, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg are talking against the backdrop of a mountain of bloody bodies in the uniform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, from which fumes rise upward. Thunberg addresses Zelensky: “How dare you destroy the ozone layer with your ‘counter-offensive’?” This image began to circulate shortly after the activist's trip to Kyiv at the end of June, during which she, in particular, spoke about the environmental disaster caused breakthrough Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station. Publications with an alleged El Jueves cover appeared in many popular Telegram channels, for example “Putin on Telegram"(168,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Uncle Slava on Telegram" (61,000) and "From the scene"(59,000).
The viral image shows the issue number - 2389. This number is in cover archive no magazine. Last of released at the time the fake cover was distributed on Telegram - No. 2388, and it is dedicated to various types of addiction, including smoking, gluttony, gambling addiction, drug and Internet addiction.
This time, the authors of the fake cover avoided the technical mistakes they made when creating previous images purporting to be from El Jueves. IN November 2022 (cover about a call from Russian pranksters to the Polish president), in April 2023 (Easter cover about Zelensky) and in May 2023 (cover about counterattack and worms) the artists forgot to change the numbers above the barcode, which should match the magazine number. This time the numbers are the same.
But there is another inaccuracy. WITH March 2023 The magazine's slogan has changed. Previously, above the title of the publication it was written “A magazine that comes out on Wednesdays.” Now there is another inscription, which can be translated as “Magazine for fun for the whole month.” In any case, the issues for March, May, June and July came out with exactly this slogan, and the April issue was a special issue about corruption. And on the fake cover of the supposedly new issue of the magazine there is an old slogan.
We were able to find the earliest mention of a fake cover in the Telegram channel “Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation"(10,000 views), where a post with this image was published on July 3 at 13:20 Moscow time. It is noteworthy that in the last two cases, the names of publications were distorted in this channel - Handelsblad instead of Handelsblatt and Eljueves instead of El Jueves. It is possible that this was done deliberately to make it difficult to find the original source of the fake.
Cover photo: collage “Checked”
- Is it true that foreign magazines published these covers dedicated to Zelensky and the Ukrainian church?
- Is it true that foreign magazines published these covers dedicated to Zelensky, Ukraine and Easter?
- Is it true that foreign magazines published these covers dedicated to Zelensky and Ukraine?
- Is it true that foreign magazines published these covers with cartoons dedicated to Zelensky, the Dalai Lama and Swiss banks?
- Is it true that a Spanish magazine published these covers with Zelensky and NATO leaders?
- Is it true that foreign satirical magazines published these covers dedicated to the words of the Pope about the Chechens and Buryats?
- Is it true that on three covers of Charlie Hebdo the President of Ukraine is depicted as a dog?
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