Authors
Pankaj Menon is a fact-checker based out of Delhi who enjoys ‘digital sleuthing’ and calling out misinformation. He has completed his MA in International Relations from Madras University and has worked with organisations like NDTV, Times Now and Deccan Chronicle online in the past.
Amidst the quagmire of unverified content that is being widely shared on social media, attributing it to Ukraine, several users are also sharing an image showing a young couple draped in Ukrainian & Russian flags, touching their foreheads. Many users shared the image with the description-’stop war make peace’. Newschecker has found that the image is at least three years old and is not associated with the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Senior Congress leader and MP from Thiruvananthapuram constituency, Shashi Tharoor was among the many users who shared the image of the young couple draped in Ukrainian & Russian flags, calling for ‘love, peace & co-existence’ over conflict.
The tweet received 30.7K likes and over 3,000 retweets.
Several other users also shared the same image of the young couple draped in Ukrainian & Russian flags with similar captions.
Russia, on February 24, invaded Ukraine by sending air crafts into the country and attacking multiple cities, leaving the global community stunned. On Friday, the Russian forces continued to press forward, shelling the capital city of Kiev and several other locations in the country, even capturing the aerodrome near Kiev and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. While Russia has said that it is ready for talks ‘if Ukraine army lays down arms’, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called upon the world community to intervene, pointing out that sanctions did not achieve much.
Read more articles on the Russia-Ukraine conflict here.
Fact Check/verification
To trace the source of the image, Newschecker conducted a reverse image search on Google, following which we found an article by The Washington Post, carrying the same viral image. The article, written by Isabella Khurshudyan, was published in 2019 with the headline ‘She wore the Russian flag. He had Ukraine’s. Some people loved the photo and others were aghast’.
According to The Washington Post, Juliana Kuznetsova, who is Russian and her fiance, who is Ukrainian, were at a concert in Warsaw last week, featuring Belarusan rapper Max Korzh, where she noticed flags from lying around. They borrowed the flags of their respective nations and asked someone to click a picture after the concert .
“Kuznetsova said they didn’t plan the pose, but she and her fiance stood with their foreheads together, not looking at the camera and holding each other while wrapped in the flags,” the article writes.
The image showing the young couple draped in Ukrainian & Russian flags was also featured in a Russian website, Forum daily. It was also posted on the Instagram page of Max Korzh.
Conclusion
Viral image of a young couple draped in Ukrainian & Russian flags, standing together with their foreheads touching was taken in 2019 and is not associated with the ongoing Russia- Ukraine conflict.
Result: False Context/False
(Read our Hindi fact check here)
Our Sources
Instagram post by maxkorzhfan: https://www.instagram.com/p/B5dOymxi362/
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Authors
Pankaj Menon is a fact-checker based out of Delhi who enjoys ‘digital sleuthing’ and calling out misinformation. He has completed his MA in International Relations from Madras University and has worked with organisations like NDTV, Times Now and Deccan Chronicle online in the past.
