On June 17, 2024, after the European Football Championship match, the Internet was filled with evidence of provocative behavior by fans of the Romanian national team. We have verified the authenticity of these photos and videos.
The group stage match of the European Football Championship between the national teams of Ukraine and Romania attracted public attention not only for sporting reasons. According to media reports, fans of the Romanian team carried out two actions in order to infuriate their rivals - they allegedly hung the flag of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic on the podium, and at some point began chanting the name of the Russian President. A frame from a television broadcast and a video from social networks, respectively, are provided as evidence.
Both news, spread both separately and together, aroused wide interest not only in Russia and Ukraine, but also beyond their borders - the British newspaper wrote about the chant The Mirror and Italian Gazzetta Dello Sport. Among the largest Russian media, among others, the provocations at the stadium in Munich were reported TASS, Lenta.ru And "News", among the popular Telegram channels - Mash (1.1 million views at the time of writing this analysis), “Live broadcast» (710,000), Readovka (491,000), "Before everyone else. Well almost"(486,000), "Operation Z: Military Correspondents of the Russian Spring"(462,000) and others. On the social network X English-speaking publication about Romanian fans allegedly chanting Putin's name, received almost 2 million views.
On June 17 in Munich took place match the first round of the group stage of the European Football Championship between the national teams of Ukraine and Romania, which ended with the victory of the Balkan team with a score of 3:0. Before the UEFA match statedthat the stewards, in order to avoid provocations, will confiscate Russian flags from fans planning to attend the game. Previously, tricolors were noticed in the stands during the matches Serbia - England and Germany - Scotland.
Incidents with the Russian flag at the first match of the Ukrainian national team at the tournament were actually avoided. However, even as the game progressed, a frame from the broadcast began to spread across social networks, in which a black, blue and red man can be seen behind the touch judge’s back. flag DPR.
“Verified” did not find any reports of the incident on the websites UEFA, Ukrainian AssociationAnd football And FederationAnd football of Romania.
Judging by the behavior of the Romanian football players in the viral footage, it can be assumed that it was taken while celebrating a goal. During live broadcasts of the European Championship, all channels that have acquired the right to broadcast show the same picture. “Verified” studied the recordings of the match shown in different countries (Russia, Italy, Switzerland and Ukraine), and came to the conclusion that the screenshot was taken at the end of the 32nd minute of the match, after the Romanian team opened the scoring.
As is easy to see, there is no flag behind the side judge, only bare shields.
Thus, the DPR flag appeared in one of these screenshots as a result of image processing in a photo editor. Soon after Internet users began publishing footage exposing this forgery, many media outlets came out with refutation their previous notes, some even brought Apologies to the readers.
The first (at least in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet) to spread the fake photo was the pro-Russian Telegram channel “Urgently, now"(49,000 views) June 17 at 17:02 Moscow time, about half an hour after the original footage was shown on television. This channel repeatedly mentioned V debriefings “Verified” as a source of disinformation about Ukraine.
As for the video with the chanting of Putin’s name, in this case, “Verified” did not find any evidence of a scandal on the official resources of the championship organizing committee and the football federations of Ukraine and Romania. Fact checkers from the project Les Observateurs French TV channel France 24 contacted UEFA, and they responded that their representatives did not hear such chants during the game. When similar incident occurred in July 2022 in a Champions League qualifying match between Dynamo Kiev and Istanbul Fenerbahçe, the shouts of Turkish fans were heard by both the players and the coach of the Ukrainian team, which resulted in a rather noticeable scandal. During the recent game in Munich, the chant that the media wrote about was not heard on any broadcast viewed by Verified, and the chants were not heard on any other amateur video from the stadium. Judging by the videos from social networks, the Romanian fans sang other songs.
The Ukrainian government reacted to the viral video Center strategic communications and information security. Its representatives stated that the audio track for the video was edited and contains fragments of a well-known song among Ukrainian fans. songs “Putin is a dick,” first performed in 2014 fans football clubs "Shakhtar" and "Metalist".
This statement seems plausible. In particular, in the viral video one can clearly hear chant “la-la-la-la la-la-la-la”, which distinguishes the song of Ukrainian fans. Also, the word “Putin” in the “Romanian” chant sounds the second time very similar to the first, as if the chant was copied and used in the audio track again. Minor differences may be due to inter-noise also present in the video.
At the same time, other denials began to appear on social networks - in particular, allegedly made at the stadium in Munich recording, which features a song by Ukrainian fans about Putin. This video was actually removed in 2021 at the European Championship match between the national teams of Ukraine and Austria in Bucharest. The difference between the stadiums in the Romanian capital and the largest city in Bavaria is noticeable even in number tiers. Some users claimed that this particular audio track was used to edit the chants of Romanian fans in a recent viral video, but “Verified” can neither confirm nor deny this fact - some differences between the recordings are noticeable, but could be the result of simple digital processing.
There are other arguments in favor of the fact that we are dealing with editing. So, the surname Putin in Romanian sounds Not at all So, as in Russian or Ukrainian. This is due to the peculiarities of phonetics and is noticeable in Romanian media reports.
Below Romanian media and bloggers' YouTube videos about the alleged incident repeatedly meet comments in Romanian like “I was at this match, I have never heard such chants.” Fact checkers from the Italian Open project went further and found a fan who, judging by his activity on social networks (@andrei_mariusss Instagram account), was present at the match. He also denied information about chanting Putin’s name during the match and said that, on the contrary, Romanian fans supported Ukrainian fans (as he writes Bild, as a sign of solidarity they chanted: “Ukraine, Ukraine!”). Note that after the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, Bucharest was entirely supports Kyiv, including teaches Ukrainian pilots control F-16 fighters at their bases and conveys neighboring weapons country.
In the viral video, you can see footage shown on the scoreboard at the time of filming. The Spanish edition also published them from a different angle. Marca.
As in the case of the DPR flag allegedly hanging on the stands, this recording, judging by the scoreboard, was made after the Romanian team scored a goal. It’s incredible to imagine Romanian fans shouting en masse “Putin!” instead of celebrating your team's success.
The scoreboard from the viral video has one more feature. It first shows an animation with the word “Goal!”, then the face of the Ukrainian football player and, finally, the jubilation of his Romanian opponents. However, in Marca's video, the order of these events is reversed.
Note that the scoreboard shown by the Spanish edition in the viral video is on the right, not the left - the animation on them is slightly different, but the footage from the field is identical.
If, with this information, you rewatch the viral video, then some things will seem strange. So, the fan on the left, shaking his fists in front of him, sharply moves them behind his head, although when performing chants it usually happens the other way around: the hands are thrown forward from behind the back of the head. The other man in the foreground does not clap his hands, but, on the contrary, abruptly tears them apart. All this suggests that the viral video was obtained from the original by playing back frames.
Thus, this video from the Ukraine-Romania match has all the signs of a fake. The first among Russian-language resources to publish it was the Telegram channel “Shaman Rahu"(3800 views) at 17:08 Moscow time, just 6 minutes later. after the fake footage with the DPR flag began to spread. This channel repeatedly mentioned in the analysis of “Verified” as the primary source of dissemination of disinformation about Ukraine.
Cover photo: social networks
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