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| - Fact Check: This boy is not a Russia-Ukraine war survivor, Ukrainian MP shares years old and unrelated photo
A photo of a boy is making the rounds on social media, with the claim that the child is an eight-year-old who recently survived a Russian artillery attack in Ukraine. AFWA's investigation, however, found the photo to be old and unrelated.
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India Today Fact Check
This photograph is at least a decade old and not related to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
The Russia-Ukraine war is about to enter a new calendar year. Peace between the two nations, however, remains elusive. Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, social media has been flooded with videos and photos of the devastation caused by the war, especially its human cost. Photos of Ukrainian children, in particular, have been shared very widely.
Of course, not all photos such as these are from Ukraine. And in this story, we will debunk one such photo shared on Twitter by Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko.
Vasylenko tweeted a picture of a boy with a torn t-shirt and bruises and dirt on his face. She claimed that the child is an eight-year-old named Marc, who recently survived a Russian artillery attack in Ukraine. At the time of filing this story, the post had received more than 11,500 retweets. The archived version of the post can be seen here. Screenshots of Vasylenko’s tweet were also shared by many on Facebook.
AFWA’s investigation, however, found that the photo is around a decade old and not related to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
AFWA probe
Multiple people responded to Vasylenko’s tweet, stating the photo was old. A reverse search of the boy’s photograph led us to social media posts from April 2022. These posts, too, claimed the photograph was of a Ukrainian victim of Russia’s invasion.
Around the same time, several people on Twitter pointed out that the photo of the boy was very old, and said that it was used by Irish author Christina McKenna on her book’s cover.
Searching further, we found the photo in a video uploaded to YouTube in October 2014. In this video, we found the boy’s photo on the cover of the Spanish translation of McKenna's book "The Misremembered Man" — (El Hombre En El Olvido). The 2008 novel is set in Northern Ireland.
We found the same cover photo on an Amazon listing for the book as well.
We also searched for the photograph on TinEye. As per TinEye, the photo first appeared on Flickr in March 2012. However, the photo is no longer available on the Flickr accounts mentioned by TinEye.
While the source of the photograph is unclear, it is clear that it is at least around a decade old and not related to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
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