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Old photos of Ukrainian Pres shared as him joining the fight against Russia

Amidst the ongoing Russian military offensive in Ukraine, two pictures of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is widely being circulated on social media claiming that Zelenskyy has joined the frontline to defend his country.

The photos are accompanied by a Hindi caption that reads, “The President of Ukraine won the hearts of his countrymen. When the people of his nation needed him, he entered the battlefield himself wearing the uniform of the soldiers.” The caption also mocks Prime Minister Narendra Modi by referring to his statement (“I ran for my life with a lot of difficulties”) when his convoy was stuck on a flyover in Punjab.

The claim has been widely shared on Twitter.

These photos have also been posted on Facebook with the same claim.

Click to view slideshow.

Old photos

We performed Google reverse image search on both the photos and found them to be from April 2021. The first image can be found in a news report by Kyiv Post that gives credit to AFP for the image.

We checked for the image on Getty Images and found it there. The photo was uploaded on February 11, 2021. The photo is captioned, “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky inspects during his visit along with G7 ambassadors in Donbass, Ukraine on February 11, 2021.”

The second image can be found in a news report by Reuters published on April 21, 2021. The caption on the photo suggests that it was clicked on April 9, 2021. “Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visits positions of armed forces near the frontline with Russian-backed separatists in Donbass region,” it reads.

Hence, two images that are a year old were shared with a misleading claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has joined the frontline in the ongoing Ukraine crisis.

The post Old photos of Ukrainian Pres shared as him joining the fight against Russia appeared first on Alt News.

This post was originally published on Alt News.