The propagandists actually edited the photo themselves to remove Svyrydenko. Her presence at the scene is proven by videos from different angles.
In the context of the attack on the Cabinet of Ministers building carried out by Russia on September 7, a fake is spreading online that the Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko published an edited selfie against the background of the debris. Some propagandists even go further in their conspiracy theories and claim that the photo was not taken at all in the Cabinet of Ministers, because the sea can supposedly be seen from the building’s window.
In fact, the photo without Svyrydenko was edited. The propagandists did this, most likely, using the Clone Stamp tool in Photoshop. It allows you to remove elements from the image and fill the gaps with content. Since the tool simply copies and pastes pixels from one part of the image to another, an unnatural texture, pattern, lighting, or an overload of strange details can give away a fake. All of these flaws are present in the photo shared by the propagandists exactly where Yulia Svyrydenko was in the original, and are clearly noticeable. The area has an unnatural color and a more smeared, soft texture than the wood and wall on either side of it. Even the usually uncritical audience of propaganda sources drew attention to the low quality of the editing: some of the subscribers even called the post a «provocation».
In addition, the statements that the photo appeared on the network long before the strike do not correspond to reality. The first photo without Yulia Svyrydenko was published by the propaganda source Operation Z on September 7 at 17:34, that is, already after the strike. In the same publication, propagandists attached a video of Yulia Svyrydenko from the scene of the events, contradicting their own narrative.
No less absurd are the claims that the sea can supposedly be seen from the building’s window, and therefore the photo could not have been taken in the Cabinet of Ministers. In other photos from the scene of the events, the landscape is better visible: this is the Dnipro and ordinary greenery, which from afar appears bluish due to an optical effect called Rayleigh scattering. For the same reason, for example, mountains from a great distance can also look blue.
With such fakes, Russia is trying to justify, legitimize, or even deny its own missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure. We recently refuted similar disinformation in the article Fake: Russia Targets Industrial Facility in Chernihiv With Ballistic Missile.
