In August 2024, screenshots of advertisements allegedly posted on the Ukrainian service OLX appeared on the Internet. They depict Orthodox icons that were allegedly taken by the Ukrainian military from the Kursk region. We decided to check the authenticity of these images.
Images of stolen icons with comments in the spirit of “these are the trophies they are bringing from the Kursk region” began to spread on August 21. Posts with screenshots and offensive comments addressed to Ukrainians appeared, for example, in the channels “Uncle Slava"(206,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Falcon"(195,000), "Soldier of fortune" (125,000) and "Tsargrad-TV"(67,000).
Invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the Kursk region of Russia started on the night of August 6. Armed units broke through the border posts and began to advance in several directions at once. At the time of writing this analysis, Ukraine continued control dozens of settlements in the Kursk region.
The most common collection published by Telegram channels consists of five allegedly stolen icons. Each image is a screenshot of a page from the Ukrainian classifieds service OLX.
The first ad shows an icon of St. Nicholas. The screenshot in the product description indicates that this is a trophy from the Kursk region.
Using a Google reverse image search, "Verified" found original ad on OLX. In the top line, instead of the subsection “Kursk region / Kursk”, the city of Konotop, Sumy region is indicated. On the right in the description there is no mention of the Kursk region and the trophy origin of the icon.
The second advertisement allegedly offers to purchase an antique ancient icon of the 18th century from Kursk (although the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not reach the Russian regional center during their operation). At the bottom, the indication of origin is repeated: “A unique icon from the Kursk region.”
In this case, “Verified” also found original ad. It states that this is an icon of the New Testament Trinity, and it is sold in the city of Zaporozhye. Again, there is no indication of Kursk origin. It is noteworthy that the announcement was written in Russian, but in the edited version the text was replaced with Ukrainian.
The third icon looks more modern than the previous ones. The viral picture indicates that this is an icon from Kursk, and below in the Ukrainian-language description it says: “Seraphim of Sarov. You can pray, you can resell, you can do whatever you want. This is from the Kursk region."
IN original ad OLX does not have these marks. It says there that this is a healing icon of Seraphim of Sarov, and in the lower part the miraculous properties that the image of the reverend hieromonk supposedly possesses are listed. The announcement was posted by a user from Kyiv on July 24, two weeks before the start of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ invasion of the Kursk region.
The fourth icon is the Mother of God and Child in a gold frame. In the viral picture on the right, the description says: “Trophy, Kursk region. Ancient icon." At the bottom there is an addition: “An ancient icon of the Mother of God, brought from the Kursk region. Trophy. There are 12 more icons available.”
As in previous cases, in this announcement There is not a word about Kursk on the Ukrainian service. The icon, judging by the subsection, is sold in Kremenchug.
Finally, the fifth icon, also with the Mother of God, was allegedly also brought from Kursk. And below in the description it is indicated that all proceeds from the sale will go to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
IN this announcement, as in other cases, Kursk is not mentioned; the icon is sold by a user from the Lviv region.
All fake advertisements are united by one technical detail: in the top line, the last two subsections are the Kursk region and Kursk. However, on OLX the search allows you to select only Ukrainian regions - under the letter K on the site the Kiev and Kirovograd regions, as well as Crimea, are represented.
Thus, all five advertisements that have spread on the Internet are fakes, created on the basis of real pages of the OLX service. The authors of the fake images changed the accompanying captions to the photographs, indicating that the icons were allegedly taken from the Kursk region. The prices for icons were also edited (in most cases they increased) and the line with sections of the site at the top of the images.
The earliest mention of stolen icons along with corresponding images that was found by “Verified” was a post in the Telegram channel “Release the Kraken!"(66,000 views), published on August 21 at 18:04 Moscow time. This channel repeatedly was mentioned in our analyzes as one of the sources of distribution fake messages And images.
Cover photo: social networks
Read on topic:
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
