Reports about Ukraine are not fake as they are claimed
What rumours are circulating in the Netherlands about the war in Ukraine? And what’s wrong? afrilatest looks at this on a weekly basis with the help of reliable international fact-checkers. This time we look at images that are labeled as fake without evidence.
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Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, fake fact checks have been circulating worldwide. These are messages that pretend that there is evidence that a claim is not correct, when that evidence is not there at all. We also saw examples of this in the Netherlands.
Fragment of Nieuwsuur with Zelensky is not old
On March 13, Nieuwsuur broadcast a clip in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits wounded soldiers.
According to a widely shared Dutch Twitter message, the images are much older than claimed in Nieuwsuur. According to the twitterer, this proves that Zelensky is a notorious liar. FVD leader Thierry Baudet also shared this message.
But why would this video be old? According to the Twitter post, a woman in the video was killed on February 24. The woman in the video is said to be military doctor Inna Derusova. According to various sources, Derusova did indeed die on February 24.
Only the woman in the video is not Inna Derusova, but the Ukrainian commander Tetiana Ostashchenko. This was the conclusion of several fact-checkers from PolitiFact, Reuters and DPA Factchecking, among others. Ostashchenko’s name is also on her uniform. Moreover, photos of Ostashchenko that were posted before the Russian invasion of Ukraine show that she is the woman who was in Nieuwsuur.
Reports about Ukraine are not fake as they are claimed, Zelensky visits wounded soldiers
No evidence that pregnant women at bombed hospital were actresses
On March 9, a maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol was bombed. Photojournalists Evgeniy Maloletka and Mstyslav Chernov photographed the havoc after the bombing.
In these photos, which ended up in many media via the AP news agency, two injured pregnant women can be seen.
According to the Russian embassy in the United Kingdom and the Russian ambassador to the Netherlands, the photos were staged. Both photos would show the same woman, and this woman would also be an actress.
However, multiple fact-checkers showed that there are really two different women in the photos. Also, there is no evidence that any of these women are an actress.
Who the woman photographed on a stretcher is, is not known. A surgeon reported to AP that she died. The woman with the dotted pajamas is a Ukrainian beauty blogger.
On her Instagram account, she already posted a photo of her pregnant belly on February 14. In the meantime, she has given birth to a girl.
Reports about Ukraine are not fake as they are claimed
Photos from Kharkiv are not from 2018
On February 24, NU.nl, like many other media outlets, posted a photo of a woman who had been injured that day in a Russian airstrike on Kharkiv. In several posts on social media, it is claimed that this photo is years old. It would have been taken in a gas explosion in 2018. This is not true.
The photo was taken by photojournalist Wolfgang Schwan. Schwan is currently in Ukraine and there is nothing to suggest that this photo was taken before February 24.
The woman in the photo, Olena Kurilo, was also seen injured on February 24 in a video from Euronews and in other images from Kharkiv.
One possible reason why some thought the photo was from 2018 is that the building Kurilo stands near looks a bit like a building in the Russian city of Magnitogorsk.
A gas explosion took place in this Russian building in 2018. Spanish fact-checker Maldita proved that this Russian building does not match the one in Kurilo’s photo.
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