Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 10/03/2022
Twitter users shared a photo of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky allegedly holding a swastika jersey. This is a photomontage.
A photo of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky holding the jersey of the Ukrainian national football team is being shared on the social network Twitter. On the back of the jersey, below his last name, is a stylized swastika symbol.
We found the first publication of this photo in a comment made by Twitter user Michel Chevalier. It was posted on February 28, 2022, in response to another user’s tweet.
An identical photo was published on March 4 on Twitter accounts of Zana Zivaljevic and nikola tesla prvi.
A photo of Zelensky holding a swastika jersey was also shared on Twitter as part of a collage with two other photos showing groups of men holding flags with Nazi insignia. We found this collage in a comment made by Marcus Berger. It was posted on March 1, 2022, in response to another user’s tweet.
The collage was shared by Twitter users @vojvoda_1389, Boban Miletic Bapsi, Srbin bez granica and Warriors01. Some of these tweets justify Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
What are the facts?
Unfounded claims about the “denazification” of Ukraine are justified on social networks using photos of extreme right-wing and neo-Nazi movements from this country, and some of them contain Nazi symbols. Some of these photos are authentic, but the photo of the Ukrainian president with the swastika jersey is not. In the original photo, the jersey actually features the number 95.
Zelensky posted a photo with the jersey on June 8, 2021, on his Instagram. He commented on the new jersey of the Ukrainian national football team for Euro 2020:
“The new jersey of the Ukrainian national football team (…) carries several important symbols that unite Ukrainians from Luhansk to Uzhgorod, from Chernihiv to Sevastopol. Our state – one and indivisible. Crimea is Ukraine”.
The jersey of the Ukrainian national team featured the outlines of the territory of Ukraine, which includes Crimea, and the slogan “Glory to Ukraine”, according to the article by Radio Free Europe, which was published on June 7, 2021.
A photograph of Zelensky with the jersey showing the number 95 was published by numerous media (1, 2, 3).
In the comment section of the analyzed posts, Twitter users pointed to the fact that the photo of Zelensky with the swastika jersey has been altered. Some of them published the original photo.
The photo of Volodymyr Zelensky with the swastika jersey was previously shared in other languages. The foreign fact-checking platforms Maldita, AFP Factual, and Fake news tragac from our speaking area, wrote about it.
Therefore, we rate the altered photo of the Ukrainian president with the Nazi insignia, published in Michel Chevalier’s tweet, as fake news. Other posts of this photo are rated as the distribution of fake news.