Did the Hull Daily Mail say: “70,000 Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region died in vain”?

In March 2025, a photograph of the front page of a British newspaper with a loud headline of an article about the events of the Russian-Ukrainian war circulated on the Internet. We have verified the authenticity of this image.

The photo allegedly shows the front page of the Hull Daily Mail, dated March 13, 2025. Most of the page is taken up by the huge headline “70,000 Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region died in vain” with the subheading “Britain poured hundreds of millions of pounds into Zelensky’s crushing failure.” Apparently, this refers to the military assistance that the United Kingdom has been providing to Ukraine for three years.

This news was most widely spread in pro-Russian Telegram channels, such as “Operation Z: military correspondents of the Russian spring"(545,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Sanya in Florida"(542,000), "Tynu40k Goblina» (494,000), Colonelcassad (284,000) and "Ne.Sugar» (261,000).

There is no reliable information about the losses of the Ukrainian military since their invasion of the Kursk region in August 2024. This also applies to similar statistics for the entire time of the full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine. At the beginning of February 2025, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky interview British journalist Piers Morgan estimated the losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at 45,000 people killed, however largest world media with link As early as the fall of 2024, sources cited estimates of up to 100,000 deaths. By words Head of the General Staff of the Russian Federation Valery Gerasimov, more than 67,000 military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and “foreign mercenaries” were killed in the Kursk region alone. His assessment, announced on March 15, is very close to that given in the viral image, although there is no independent confirmation of this information.

Hull Daily Mail is a newspaper published in the city of Hull in the east of Great Britain since 1885. The era of paper periodicals is inexorably approaching decline - so, according to data for the second half of 2024, the average circulation of this publication was slightly more than 4,000 copies (and this in a city with a metropolitan area of ​​half a million). Therefore, it is surprising that the first page of this newspaper attracted the attention of Russian-speaking users of social networks (even if we assume that we are talking about the online version). The reason for this could have been some authoritative British media reporting on the latest issue of their colleagues, but Verified did not find a single evidence of the distribution of the photograph in such publications. Moreover, an article with a headline from viral posts is not found by keywords on the website itself Hull Daily Mail. On the website Pressreader You can purchase a digital copy of a variety of periodicals, including any issue of the Hull Daily Mail. In the upper right corner of the picture being checked is the estimated release date of this issue: March 13, 2025. A search for the relevant Hull Daily Mail on Pressreader reveals that the top of the front page is identical to the image from the viral posts.

However, the article, the announcement of which took up most of the page, is completely different: about a boy who was found guilty of trying to kill a girl with a sword. There is nothing about the events in the Kursk region (and in general during the Russian-Ukrainian war) on the original front page. A study of other issues of the publication shows that the foreign policy agenda is predictably not of much interest to the editors.

A similar front page can be seen on others websites, where digitized copies of the Hull Daily Mail are sold.

Fact checkers from the agency AFP Reach PLC, which owns the newspaper, has been contacted for comment. Representatives of the company reported that the cover with the headline about the Kursk region is a fake.

The earliest “Verified” mention of the edited cover found is a post in the pro-Russian Telegram channel “Military observer", published on March 15 at 14:03 Moscow time. This entry included two more screenshots of newspaper issues allegedly published on March 13 - the American USA Today and the French La Croix. 

And in these cases, as can be seen through the same distributors digital copies newspapers, original covers have been edited. It is noteworthy that in the case of La Croix, the creators of the fake did not even have to change Zelensky’s photograph. However, these two fakes did not go viral on the RuNet (although hit in the French-speaking segment of social networks).

"Military Observer" has already featured in analyzes “Verified” as the primary source of disinformation about Ukraine. After a fake Hull Daily Mail front page went viral on Russian-language channels, it was started distribute English-speaking users social network X. The publication became the latest in a string numerous fakes about the losses of the Ukrainian army.

Thus, the Hull Daily Mail did not publish an issue with a headline about 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers who “died in vain.” This image is a forgery based on the original front page of this publication.

Cover photo: social networks

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

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