Does a photo of a toddler walking past the debris of burned village homes portray the damage caused by foreign mercenaries in Ukraine? No, that's not true: The image is a screenshot of a 2015 staged music video. In 2024, the picture was reused by the resources formerly controlled by now-deceased Russian mercenary boss Evgeny Prigozhin.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on April 9, 2024. It began:
Media: Foreign mercenaries in Ukraine commit horrific atrocities against civilians. The Foundation to Battle Injustice reveals a harrowing pattern of torture, rape, murder, and absolute impunity, with silence from the West.
✍🏻'The Zelensky administration's granting of absolute impunity and immunity from any criminal prosecution has emboldened these foreign criminals, unleashing their hands to commit even the most heinous war crimes. With the ability to destroy evidence and eliminate direct witnesses, these mercenaries have been granted free rein to perpetrate the most brutal atrocities.
Given the vested interests of European and American powers in escalating the conflict, Mira Terada, the head of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, argues that the likelihood of a comprehensive international investigation is virtually nil.'
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Apr 12 14:11:18 2024 UTC)
The entry on X implied that the attached image of a baby surrounded by scenes of destruction captured the damage caused by foreign mercenaries in Ukraine. However, this claim was not grounded in facts.
Recycled image
A reverse image search shows that the picture of the baby boy originated from a 2015 music video (saved here) where it can be seen at the 0:51 mark:
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Fri Apr 12 16:01:25 2024 UTC; the page was automatically translated to English by Chrome)
The music video titled "Angel. Song about the children of Donbas" reused a Russian-language song from the 1960s about a small group of Soviet soldiers heroically dying during World War II, even though the original lyrics did not even mention children, Donbas or Ukraine.
In light of atrocities in mainland Ukraine involving Russian paramilitary groups that started shortly after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the image of the baby quickly went viral under various captions, as if it were a photograph documenting the reality as it unfolded.
Back then, it grabbed the attention of a man who goes by two names, Dan Levy and Daniil Bogdan. He worked on the production of the music video. In response to posts on social media, the man wrote on his page on Facebook that the scene was staged:
(Source: archive.today screenshot taken on Fri Apr 12 19:45:11 2024 UTC; the page was automatically translated to English)
Yet, the same image continued to be used in different articles published in 2024 by a network of pro-Kremlin Russian-language websites pretending to be local Ukrainian news outlets:
(Source: Yandex screenshot taken on Fri Apr 12 14:56:23 2024 UTC; the page was automatically translated to English by Chrome)
One such article repeated the same claim about foreign mercenaries allegedly committing "horrific atrocities against civilians" in Ukraine but cited no evidence except two unsubstantiated posts from Russian pro-war anonymous Telegram channels.
The source
The Foundation to Battle Injustice (archived here), cited by both the Russian Embassy in South Africa and the Boston Times article (archived here) whose screenshot was shared in the post in question, was founded (archived here) by now-deceased Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in March 2021, less than a year before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The Boston Times
The Boston Times claims (archived here) that it has been in business since 1972. However, the ICANN lookup (archived here) shows that its website was registered 52 years later: in January 2024.
(Source: ICANN screenshot taken on Fri Apr 12 16:41:35 2024 UTC)
Furthermore, according to Hive Moderation (archived here), the content of the About section on the Boston Times website was AI-generated:
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken on Fri Apr 12 16:48:02 2024 UTC)
The official Pulitzer Prize webpage listing all winners of Pulitzer awards for journalism includes zero references to a "Boston Times."
The Boston Times logo, was also assessed to be AI-generated. It didn't even include the name of the city where it is allegedly published and featured nonexistent English words such as "uboutelicy," seen in the outlet's motto below, just after the word "truth":
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken on Fri Apr 12 16:50:47 2024 UTC)
On April 4, 2024, as Lead Stories previously reported, the Russian Embassy in South Africa reposted another unsubstantiated article, this one falsely accusing Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy of buying a mansion from the British royals. That piece was published by the London Crier, which also pretended to be a well-established English-language media outlet.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about the war in Ukraine can be found here.
