Fake photos about Germans: Farmers want Putin for president, restaurateurs refuse to support Ukraine

Pro-Kremlin media outlets and Telegram channels are distributing a photo with a tractor on the bucket of which is attached a banner with the inscription "Scholz nach Sibirien! Putin nach Berlin!" ("Sholz - to Siberia! Putin - to Berlin!")

The propagandists accompany this photo with a post that "German farmers want Vladimir Putin as the president of Germany."

This is a fake photo. The propagandists used graphic editors to replace the real inscription on the banner which says "Ist der Lanwirt tot gibt es kein Brot" ("If the farmer is dead, there is no bread").

The original photo was published in April 2019 during a rally held by German farmers protesting against the tightening of new government fertilizer requirements.

Interestingly, Olaf Scholz did not even head the German government at that time. The Bundestag elected him Chancellor on December 8, 2021. The news story with the original photo appeared two years before.

It should also be noted that the president of Germany is Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who, according to the German constitution, has less power than the chancellor.

This fake appeared on the internet against the background of a new rally by German farmers on January 8-15, 2024, where they protested against the government's planned reductions in subsidies, in particular, for diesel fuel for agricultural machines and expressed their dissatisfaction with the government's policy in the agricultural sector.

Another fake narrative promoted by Russian propaganda is the fatigue and refusal of Westerners to help Ukraine.

As part of this campaign, Telegram channels and the social network X are spreading screenshots of the official websites of three German beer restaurants, supposedly taken in the Internet Archive application (allows you to see all changes to web pages). The old screenshots allegedly have Ukrainian symbols, and the new ones allegedly removed them. In this way, the propagandists want to show that local businesses seem to be refusing further support for Ukraine.

This is also a fake. None of the official websites of these three institutions have ever featured Ukrainian symbols. Using the Internet Archive application, we checked the official websites of Protokoll Berlin, Apfelwein Dax and Finest Beer Culture.

From the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, from February 24, 2022, there were 9, 15 and 25 changes, respectively, on the official websites of these restaurants. None of them concerned the addition of Ukrainian symbols. The version of the sites that can be seen on the screenshots of the propagandists simply does not exist.

Protokoll Berlin, Apfelwein Dax and Finest Beer Culture are not big franchises, but local beer restaurants located in Berlin and Frankfurt. Their social media pages have only a few thousand followers.

Russian propagandists found small German beer restaurants, opened the site through the Internet Archive, took screenshots, added Ukrainian symbols and forged the dates when the web pages were changed in a graphic editor and stated that the owners of these establishments stopped supporting Ukraine.

Such fakes create the impression that Germany has stopped supporting Ukraine. But it is not so.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has already stated several times this year that Germany will continue to support Ukraine financially, militarily and humanitarianly for as long as it takes. On January 8, he confirmed that "Germany's plans have been determined: the government in the budget took care of the possibility of investing 8 billion euros" in defense support for Ukraine. The fact that Germany will allocate "more than seven billion euros" in 2024 (not all projects have been determined yet, that's why the mentioned amount is smaller) was mentioned in Scholz's phone call with U.S. President Joseph Biden on January 16. On January 18, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock promised that "Germany will support Ukraine as long as Ukrainians need it."

Therefore, Germany this year provided for a doubling of the amount of funding for defense aid alone. The German authorities have also pledged that the country will continue to provide asylum to over a million Ukrainian refugees as long as necessary. In addition, a large international conference on the reconstruction of Ukraine is to be held in Berlin this summer. Currently, Germany is the second-largest donor of all-round support for Ukraine after the United States.

Andriy Olenin, Olga Tanasiychuk