Moskovsky Komsomolets, Lenta.ru and other Kremlin media report a photograph of a Ukrainian soldier discovered by an Israeli journalist wearing a Nazi flag patch on his backpack. MK writes (spelling preserved):
“The photo of a Ukrainian soldier with a swastika patch on his backpack caused surprise in Israel. Zvika Klein, a journalist for The Jerusalem Post , wrote about this on his Twitter account (the social network is blocked in Russia).
Klein shared the photo and wrote that it was taken by a Jewish Ukrainian soldier on a train to Kyiv.
The photo shows that the patch on the Ukrainian backpack depicts the flag of the Third Reich, the symbol of Nazi Germany.
The journalist expressed the hope that this is not a popular trend, and noted the account of the President of Ukraine Zelensky on the publication.
In October, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny posted a photo of himself with a bracelet on his arm on his Twitter account. Users saw that the bracelet depicted a swastika.
For some reason, MK does not include in its publication the photo that angered the Israeli, instead the article is illustrated with a photograph of a man in a white T-shirt against the backdrop of a desert and mountains that bear little resemblance to the Ukrainian landscape. Note "Lenta" does not coincide with "MK" verbatim, but it miraculously repeats the same mistake: the Israeli journalist is called either Klein or Klein.
Zvika Klein (that's what his name is) is a well-known Israeli journalist who has not been seen spreading pro-Russian fakes; his Twitter account has been verified. But here he seems to have been misled.
When examining the image using the Image Error Level Analysis program, one of whose tools removes everything but noise, it can be seen that there is less noise on the Nazi war flag patch than in the surrounding image fragments. This is a sure sign that the flag is the result of photo editing. Yes, and with the naked eye you can see that the image of the patch is somewhat clearer than the backpack, and it does not bend along with a rather densely stuffed backpack.
Additionally, Klein writes in a tweet dated November 4:
“A Ukrainian Jewish soldier was traveling yesterday on a train to Kyiv and saw this Ukrainian soldier…”
But on the headrests of the seats is the logo of the Ukrainian High-Speed Railway Company (UZSHK), which existed until 2021. Now the new logo of the Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznytsya) is used instead. Apparently, the author of the photomontage used an old photograph.
The Ukrainian Center for Combating Disinformation claims that with the help of some program that analyzes images, it has established that in the original, the flag of Israel was in place of the Nazi flag. What program was used, the Center does not report.
As for the swastika on Zaluzhny’s bracelet, The Insider already wrote about this in the “Antifake” section. The pattern on the bracelet becomes similar to a swastika only at low image resolution.
