At the end of June 2023, a screenshot of the publishing of Politico appeared on the Web, the authors of which allegedly claim that a successful counterattack will require 20 million lives from Ukraine. We decided to check whether such a publication came out.
On June 28, a screenshot of the article by Politico magazine under the heading “20,000,000 lives in the name of freedom” began to spread on the Internet. On this screenshot is a photograph of wound Ukrainian technology and one paragraph of the text. “Given that the Ukrainian counterattack led to the loss of 16,000 soldiers killed for the return of 50 km² of territory, more than 20 million soldiers will be needed to achieve the goal of returning the entire territory if you follow the dynamics of military operations.” Many popular Telegram channels wrote about this article, including "Live broadcast"(812,000 views at the time of writing this analysis),"Russia now"(393,000),"NE.SAHAR"(319 000),"Dmitry Vasilet"(246,000) and"Truthfulness"(243,000).
The earliest publication of the screenshot that managed to find "verified" appeared on June 28 at 12:40 Moscow time in the Telegram channel "The point of the explosion"(17,000 views). There was no link to the original source in either later posts.
Detect on the site Politico (as well as on the site European version) such an article was not possible for any of the keywords. There are no Research headings there, where the material was supposedly published. Moreover, according to the word Counter -offence, which is used in a distributed text to denote a counterattack. There is no publication. All because it is a rough lexical mistake, in English a “counterattack” - Counteroffance. As notes Associated Press, in a small text in the screenshot there are many other, less noticeable syntactic and lexical errors.
There are other differences from ordinary articles in Politico. In the distributed screenshot, the text follows immediately after the photograph. Politico publications are formalized in a different way: after the main photo, the date and time of the release of the article, as well as the name of the author, are indicated.
Finally, the large world media turned for comments directly to the editorial office of Politico. The representative of the publication Melissa Cook said Associated Pressthat Politico did not publish such an article. And her colleague Emma KRSTICH from the department for working with the audience in a conversation with Reuters I drew attention to the fact that this text, abounding with punctuation and grammatical errors, does not comply with the editorial standards of Politico.
Thus, the screenshot of the article allegedly from Politico magazine is Fake. There is no such publication on the website of the publication, the journal employees deny that they released such a note, and in its text there are many errors. In addition, recently, the Ukrainian counterattack has become a popular plot for fake authors. Since mid -May, at least six fake covers in European publications have appeared on the network (Titanic, EULENSPIEGEL, Courrier International, El Jueves, Handelsblatt) with caricatures on this subject.
Photo on the cover: social networks, screenshot "Checked"
- Is it true that European magazines released these covers dedicated to Ukrainian counter -offices?
- Is it true that European publications again devoted their covers in Ukrainian counterattack?
- Is it true that the German satirical magazines released these covers dedicated to Ukrainian counterattack?
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