At the turn of April and May 2024, a photo allegedly taken in the metro in Ukraine went viral on social networks. The photo shows a banner of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a slogan in which bloggers saw a modified phrase from the President of Russia. We verified the authenticity of the viral photo.
Approved, that the distributed photograph shows a wall next to the escalator in the Kiev metro, and on it are advertising posters calling for joining the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. On one of the banners there is a phrase in Ukrainian, which when translated into Russian sounds like this: “Why do we need such a world if there is no Ukraine there?”
“Beautiful graphics, powerful style. But there’s something familiar about it,” the Telegram channel commented on the photo with alleged plagiarism “Ukraine.ru"(139,000 views at the time of writing this analysis). The authors of the post remembered that the phrase “Why do we need such a world if there is no Russia there?” in 2018, said by Vladimir Putin. In the Telegram channel "Sheikh Tamir”(132,000 views) and asked the question: “I wonder if they (probably Ukrainians - editor’s note) understand where the original comes from?”
According to the TGStat service, at least 150 similar publications appeared on Telegram, with a total of more than 1.5 million views. Channels talked about this advertising poster in the subway "Uncle Slava"(184,000 views), Voblya (148,000), "Kirill Fedorov / War history weapons"(97,000), "Petya the First" (93,000), "Voice of Mordor"(67,000), "Yakov Kedmi"(50,000) and others, as well as public pages on VKontakte (examples here, here And here). At the same time, the Telegram channel “Actually in Kharkov” (64,000 views) claims that posters “campaigning to join the 3rd separate assault brigade “Azov”” were placed not in the Kyiv, but in the Kharkov subway. “As we have repeatedly said, the entire Ukrainian “national idea” is nothing more than a derivative of Russian culture. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Ukrainian Nazis, albeit unconsciously, are pulling towards themselves everything that “shoots” in our country,” the authors of the post believe.
Putin actually uttered the words “Why do we need such a world if there is no Russia there?” The statement was made in a documentary film by TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov “World order 2018", released in early March 2018 on the Russia 1 channel. Then the President of the Russian Federation stated that in the event of a nuclear strike on Russia, there would be a response that would lead to a global catastrophe for humanity and the world, after which he said: “But still, as a citizen of Russia and the head of the Russian state, then I want to ask the question: why do we need such a world if there is no Russia there?”
In addition to the quote, the advertisement from the distributed photo shows the coat of arms of Ukraine, the name of the 3rd separate assault brigade (3 OSBr), as well as the address site to join the ranks of this unit. The 3rd Brigade is a formation of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, which was created January 26, 2023 based on the Azov Special Operations Forces Regiment. At the same time, in the viral photo, the brigade’s emblem is blurred, probably due to the fact that the symbols of “Azov” recognized in Russia extremist, and its demonstration is prohibited.
“Verified” studied the Telegram channel of the 3rd OshBr and found a similar banner there in post dated March 16, 2024 with an offer to join the ranks of this brigade. However, unlike the photo distributed on the RuNet, the poster contains another phrase that has nothing to do with Putin’s words: “Light up in the third assault.” About this advertisement in March wrote and Ukrainian media.
How noticed fact checkers from the StopFake project, if you conduct a reverse search on the viral image in the service TinEye, you can find publications with the same photo in the foreign press. For example, April 23, 2024 snapshot appeared on the website of the French TV channel France 24. According to the caption, a poster with a call to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces brigade was placed at the Kyiv metro station, and a photo was taken earlier that day by Reuters correspondent Alina Smutko. The poster almost completely coincides with the one published in March on the unit’s Telegram channel - it does not contain a redone Putin quote, but the words “Light up in the third assault.” The same photo of Smutko was also used by Russian media in April-May, for example Lenta.ru, "Kommersant" And "Komsomolskaya Pravda" Moreover, only in the latter case was the logo of the 3rd Specialized Brigade blurred; it was probably this image that served as the main fake.
The original can also be found in photobank Reuters with corresponding description and branded watermarks. In turn, the website of the Getty Images photo agency presents snapshot from AFP correspondent Sergei Supinsky - there is a similar poster with the same slogan “Light up in the third assault”, placed on another advertising space in the Kiev metro.
The earliest post with a fabricated photo that “Verified” was able to track appeared on April 29, 2024 at 13:09 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Alchevsk news"(9100 views). In just 8 seconds. a similar publication was published in the channel “Kryminforum 🇿 🇴 🇻"(12,000 views), which several times mentioned in our analyses. Over the next 10 minutes, similar posts appeared in the channels Zanoza (10400) and "Shaman Rahu"(4000), previously many times becoming primary sources distribution misinformation.
Thus, the modified Putin quote was not used in the recruitment advertising of the Ukrainian Armed Forces brigade. In fact, unknown people edited a photo from the photo bank of a foreign news agency, replacing the phrase on the banner.
Cover photo: collage from social networks
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