Fake video with DW logo presented as 'sensational' investigation about Ukraine

Russian media outlets, pro-war Telegram channels, and pro-Russian bots on the social media site X and YouTube are distributing videos with the logo and style of the German media outlet Deutsche Welle. In the video, it is claimed that Polish journalist Agata Grzybowska published an "investigation" on the website Rzeczpospolita. This "material" states that European media outlets seem to have deliberately edited their news stories from Ukraine so that there were no Nazi symbols in the video. This was especially true of videos with military personnel. Because of this "investigation," Agata Grzybowska was allegedly fired from the news outlet.

This is a fake. Such a video is not available on the official website of Deutsche Welle or its social media accounts.

Such an investigation has never been published on the Polish website Rzeczpospolita.

A fake video consists of several videos and pictures that can be found in the public domain.

In particular, photos of the police arrest of journalist Agata Grzybowska, who was filming a protest rally outside the building of the Ministry of National Education in November 2020, and footage from the journalist's public speech about her creative work in December 2023 were used in the fake video.

Another photo with Grzybowska was published in 2022 in the Polish edition of the Vogue magazine.

Footage with Ukrainian military personnel was taken during the liberation of Kherson in 2022 and in Donbas in February 2024, and another photo was taken in October 2023 in the Lyman sector.

The strangest thing is that the propagandists also used in the video footage from the YouTube video "DW in Russian," namely the story from February 4, 2022, which tells about the decision of the Russian authorities to ban DW in Russia.

Michał Szuldrzynski, deputy editor-in-chief of the news site Rzeczpospolita, told an Ukrinform correspondent that such a person does not work for the media outlet and does not cooperate with him, and there is no name and surname of Agata Grzybowska in the salary reports of the Polish newspaper.

"Such a person did not receive salaries or fees from us," Szuldrzynski said.

He added that he had been working at Rzeczpospolita for 15 years and had never heard that the media outlet cooperated in any way with a journalist named Agata Grzybowska.

After all, Agata Grzybowska is a photojournalist, and she does not write articles or do investigations.

Andriy Olenin, Yuriy Banakhevych