Photo: Screenshot of the FB post
The photograph in the fact-checked post, showing two people with Nazi symbols on their uniforms, is altered. Foreign fact-checkers have determined that the Ukrainian flag emblem was added to the uniform of the man on the left. The eagle on the sleeve of the man on the right was copied from the uniform of the man on the left and added to the photograph, writes Truthmeter.mk.
Under the content-sharing agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text below:
We are fact-checking a post on the social network Facebook (screenshot here) saying:
And they say there are no Nazis in Ukraine, don’t they?
Then a photograph is shared, with a text in English:
Hitler would be proud of Zelensky & his soldiers!
There are two people in the photograph, allegedly Ukrainian soldiers with uniforms bearing the Nazi eagle emblem.
The Nazi eagle is a symbol originally created by the Nazi party in Germany in the 1920s representing the symbol of the German government once the Nazis came to power. After World War II, the symbol was appropriated by the Neo-Nazis in different variations. The symbol originally was an eagle holding a swastika, but many variations replaced the swastika with some other symbol.
This photograph shared on Facebook and showing two men wearing Nazi symbols on their uniforms is altered.
As Stop Fake’s fact-checkers specify, the Ukrainian flag emblem was added by editing the uniform of the man on the left. The eagle on the sleeve of the man on the right, on the other hand, was copied from the uniform of the man on the left and added to the photograph.
Also, the fact-checkers of Factcheck.bg state that with the help of the “InVID/WeVerify” tool they had determined that the photograph was technically manipulated, i.e., the emblem with the Ukrainian flag was added onto the uniform, and the eagle on the sleeve of the man on the right was copied from the same emblem from the man on the left and added to the uniform.
The “InVID/WeVerify” tool enables photograph verification using different algorithms. The “ghost” algorithm compresses and processes part of the photograph to emphasize regions that originate from another photograph. The white, light blue and green parts correspond to possible traces of editing or altering the photograph.
On several occasions Truthmeter has covered the attempts to shift the blame from Russia’s military invasion in Ukraine to Ukraine itself, alleging Kyiv’collaborated with Nazi Germany in World War II. Even with an edited photograph taken in Russia, Ukraine was accused of being a “Nazi” state.
Due to all the above-noted facts, we assess the fact-checked post as an altered content post.
