Old images of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Military Uniform Shared as Him Joining His Soldiers on The War Front…

As Ukraine battles the Russian troops to defend its sovereignty and autonomy, a barrage of images and videos claiming to be from the warzone can be seen on mainstream and social media.

Over the last few days, fact checkers across the world have debunked hundreds of fake claims made on videos and photos purported to be of war scenes in Ukraine. Fact Crescendo has also debunked a series of misinformation related to videos and photos purported as current situation in Ukraine.

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Similarly, a set of images of Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in army uniform with his soldiers are being shared with a claim that the President has joined his troops on the war front. You can see a few tweets below, which are making these claims about the President’s pictures in army uniform.

Archived Link

Archived Link

Archived Link

However, when we fact checked the images, we found that the photos are not recent. Let us check out what is the actual context of the images.

Fact Check

We conducted a reverse image search on Google for the images and found that the images are old. In fact, the images were shot before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The images of President Zelenskyy in army uniform are of last year.

We found the images on image stock website Getty Images as well. As per the description provided on Getty Images, the images captured on December 06, 2021, when the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the front-line positions of Ukrainian military in Donbass, Ukraine.

Getty Images

One of the image is also published by a Filipino news website Tribune.net. The title of their article is ‘Kremlin says not moving towards war with Ukraine’. The article published on 11^th April 2021 contains one of the viral photos. The article attributes this photo to AFP and the description of the image says, “This handout picture taken and released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service on April 9, 2021 shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) on the front line with Russia backed separatists in Mariupol region. (AFP)”. 

To read the article- Tribune.net | Archived Link

Thus, all three images are not recent and were taken last year on different occasions when President Zelenskyy visited his troops on the frontiers. 

Conclusion

The images being shared on social media platforms as Ukrainian President on the front lines of the war with Russia are not recent. We found that the images were taken on different occasions last year when President Zelenskyy visited the front lines and met his troops. These images have no relation with the current war in Ukraine.