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Nazi flags in Ukraine

Viral Nazi-flag #1

Nazi flag pic 1

This picture has been altered. The left flag (with swastika) and right flag (with skulls) are photoshopped.  Error Level Analysis (ELA) of Fotoforensics.com reveals the details. I found another version of the image with additional changes. See the Fotoforensics report for details.

Original picture was not found.

Viral Nazi-flag #2

ukraine-2

Fotoforensics analysis revealed that the Nazi-flag with swastika is photoshopped. See Dr. Neal Krawetz’s tweets (check the full thread for details):

Note that this analysis is based on Camera Color and Principal Component Analysis (PCA), not on the Error Level Analysis (ELA).

Original picture was not found. Several variants of the picture can be found, but due to the low quality, none of them can be analyzed. It’s possible that original photo has not been found.

Disclaimer: this post is not political. It is about the technical facts of two fake pictures. I don’t know from where these photos originate, who posted them or why.

Thanks to Dr. Neal Krawetz for his help – and running Fotoforensics.com!

Update 2nd of April 2023

Snopes, a well known fact-checking site, posted an article about the viral image 2 on March 14th, 2023. They concluded that the image is real.

Outside of alleged forensic artifacts suggesting that the Nazi flag in this picture was added after the fact, Snopes has identified no evidence to suggest the picture is fake. Context provided by the profile of the person who first posted the image lends further doubt to that claim. 

Reference: Snopes fact-check https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/azov-swastika-flag-ukraine/

Snopes fact check ignores the technical evidence meaning the forensic analysis by Neal Krawetz, and gives more value to the historical context of the image. Image was posted by Oleg Pyenya on VK. They have posted plenty of far-right and pro-Nazi content. This isn’t a new finding: many persons who were involved in tracking and checking this image noticed Pyenya’s VK post. Example blog post from 2014: http://ukraineatwar.blogspot.com/2014/11/nazis-in-azov-battalion.html The blogger also contacted Krawetz.

One of the analysed images was the one posted by Oleg Pyenya. However, the very first photo came from a free photo hosting site in Poland (https://zapodaj.net/). It’s no longer there. We can’t be sure who uploaded it or where it came from.

For me, the technical evidence has more value than historical context. Even if a known pro-Nazi account posted this image, it doesn’t make it real. Forensic analysis was made by an actual expert who still stands by his original conclusion.

For reference, below is a list of first few versions of the picture together with a time stamp:

According to Krawetz, a burst of pictures coming in within a short period of each other suggests a viral source. Fotoforensics received hundreds of variations of this picture. None of them are anywhere near original. We don’t know where this picture originated. For Krawetz, this is a strong indicator that the picture’s contents cannot be trusted.

11 comments

  1. AHAHAH!
    Get real they do the nazis salutes !
    Is that photoshoped too? xD

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    Reply

    • Looks fake to me, you can see a red outline around the flag and the two people in front of it have white halo, ironically the white is in the same area as the white in the nazi flag picture. Seems more likely an edit of the nazi flag picture.

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      Reply

  6. >Original picture was not found.

    Nope. Nothing in this post proves either image is fake. In fact, the twitter post you linked to some guy proves the second image is real.

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    Reply

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