Is it true that the Victory Banner was projected onto the Brandenburg Gate on the night of May 8?

On May 8, 2024, media and Telegram channels reported that the lighting of one of the main Berlin landmarks was hacked and the Victory Banner was projected onto the structure. We checked if this news is true.

As reported, on the night of May 8, unknown persons hacked the illumination system of the Brandenburg Gate and projected onto the arch an image of the Soviet banner raised over the Reichstag in 1945. German police have allegedly launched an investigation into the incident. The news was accompanied by illustrative materials - photographs and videos in which the unusual projection was visible from different angles.

The footage was distributed "Arguments and facts", TV channels "Constantinople" And "360", "Military Review", Newsland, State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company "Yugoria", "Vesti Sevastopol"and other Russian media. The news gained great popularity on Telegram, where it was shared, for example, by the channels “Live broadcast"(680,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Pozdnyakov 3.0» (323,000), KB (243,000), Nexta Live (238,000) and "Ekaterina Mizulina"(228,000). This information went far beyond the Russian-language Internet - for example, a post written in English by the pro-Russian blogger Trollstoy on the social network X dialed about 1.9 million views.

Every year on May 8 and 9, commemorative events are held in Berlin to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. As was the case a year earlier, police were present on the memorial grounds in Treptow, Tiergarten and Schönholzer-Heide parks and in the immediate vicinity of them. banned display Russian flags, St. George ribbons, military uniforms, orders, as well as symbols glorifying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. An exception is provided only for World War II veterans, diplomats and other officials. The restrictions do not apply to other city venues where normal assembly laws apply. The Brandenburg Gate does not belong to this category (the nearest memorial in Tiergarten is about 350 m). The tradition of highlighting a landmark in the colors of the national flag as a sign of support for the people of a particular country exists; this is usually done on sad occasions. This happened after terrorist attacks in Paris, London, Jerusalem, Istanbul or Brussels, as well as in February 2022 after the start of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. But in 2017, when the Berlin authorities bypassed with their attention to the terrorist attack in the St. Petersburg metro and did not illuminate the Brandenburg Gate in the colors of the Russian flag, this is for them done members of the far-right party NPD.

“Verified” studied the websites of authoritative German media and did not find any confirmation of the news about which the Russian media wrote. There is not a single viral photograph or video on social networks taken on the night of May 8th. This is quite unusual, because the Brandenburg Gate is located in the very center of Berlin, and this place is regularly visited by both citizens and tourists.

The first thing that catches your eye in the viral photographs is that on the same column of the Brandenburg Gate in different photographs the projected letters are positioned differently, with a shift. At the same time, there is no sign of the projector wobbling in the video.

The projection of the flag on the arch of the gate also raises doubts. It is extremely difficult to obtain such an image on a surface parallel to the earth using a projector located several tens of meters away. Usually the inside of the illuminated Brandenburg Gate does not change color so bright.

There are inconsistencies in other details as well. So, in one of the videos, police cars with red and blue flashing lights are visible in the background, but the Berlin police cars installed, as a rule, blue.

The area behind the Brandenburg Gate (in the background of the photos and videos that circulated on the Internet) looked different on the night of May 8: two days earlier, the 17 June Street located there blocked for almost three months. At this site they began to build a fan zone for the European Football Championship, which will be held in Germany this year.

Apparently, the image of the Victory Banner, supposedly projected onto the Brandenburg Gate, was added to pre-shot videos and photos using editing programs.

The Berlin police press service responded to a Verified query by saying: “Based on all the data available to the Berlin police, [it can be said that] the videos and photographs circulating on social networks of the alleged projection of the Brandenburg Gate are an optical/graphic fake.”

Some Russian propaganda resources made similar statements publicly. Thus, a video agency associated with RT and located in Berlin Ruptly posted a post on Telegram that said: “Too good to be true: a video of the Victory Banner appearing on the Brandenburg Gate is going viral on the Internet. But we know for sure that this video is fake. Much to our regret."

According to the TGStat service, two out of three viral videos and two out of three pictures were for the first time published May 8 at 10:39 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Pozdnyakov 3.0”. This channel repeatedly was spotted in the dissemination of false information, and it is led by Vladislav Pozdnyakov, the creator of the “Male State” movement, which promoted gender inequality, organized persecution of people and organizations and was declared extremist in Russia.

It is noteworthy that exactly a year before, on the morning of May 8, 2023, a similar fake — about the Victory Banner, allegedly hung by unknown people over the Reichstag building. A week before the story about the Brandenburg Gate, that video was found new wave popularity - Internet users began to claim that it was actually filmed in 2024.

Cover photo: social networks

Fake

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