| schema:text
| - Fact Check: No, this is not Dynamo Kyiv football squad geared up to face Russian invaders
We found that the claim of Ukrainian footballers taking part in the Ukraine war is misleading. The men in the picture are not players of Dynamo Kyiv football club.
Listen to Story
India Today Fact Check
The photo features Gonor, a right-wing nationalist group in Ukraine; not the Dynamo Kyiv squad. There are no reports to back the claim that the club members joined the Ukrainian armed forces.
Ukrainian footballers Vitalii Sapylo and Dmytro Martynenko were recognised as the football fraternity's first casualties in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Not long after the International Federation of Professional Footballers (FIPRO) broke the news of their demise, another bit of “news” from the conflict zone made splashes across social media.
A virally shared post claimed that players from prominent Ukrainian football team Dynamo Kyiv decided to take arms against the invading Russian forces. The claim came along with a group photo of men in military outfits holding guns.
Similar posts have been archived here and here.
The India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found the claim to be misleading. The men in the picture are not players of the football club.
AFWA Probe
We first checked the official Twitter page of Dynamo Kyiv. The latest updates on the club's verified Twitter page at the time of writing this said it started charitable financing of hospitals that helped those wounded in the conflict. However, there was no information on its direct involvement in military action.
A reverse search of the viral image on Bing took us to the verified Facebook account of one Sergey Sternenko. The image shared as that of the footballers was uploaded on the page on February 25, a day after Russia's invasion began.
"Ready. We are waiting for further orders. May this night be good for Ukraine and eternal for the Russian invaders," the caption read. Sternenko is a Kyiv-based lawyer who is the legal advisor for 'Oscar T', his Facebook bio said.
The next result on the search engine, however, was a fact-check report by Reuters. The report said that the social media manager for Dynamo Kyiv, Bogdan Ilyuk, confirmed via email that the picture does not feature any Dynamo Kyiv football players.
The report also mentioned Sternenko as a member of a right-wing nationalist group called Gonor.
Gonor, in its own words, is a "modern youth movement that seeks independence for Ukraine." Members of the movement made news when they joined the pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong. You can read more on the group here.
Sternenko also uploaded the photo on Instagram with the same caption he used on Facebook.
We found the same photo uploaded on the Instagram page of Gonor on February 25. The post was captioned: "Death to the invaders! Glory to the Nation!!!"
We can thus conclude that the viral photo in question does not feature football players from FC Dynamo Kyiv.
READ | Fact Check: No, this is not a Ukrainian tank from the 2003 invasion of Iraq
ALSO READ | Fact Check: This picture of an emotional old man and his cat is not from war-torn Ukraine
Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000
You can also send us an email at factcheck@intoday.com
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)