DISINFO: Ukrainians in Germany wanted to burn a Russian flag, but burned down the house
SUMMARY
Ukrainian refugees in Germany wanted to burn a Russian flag but set fire to a house.
RESPONSE
Anti-Ukrainian disinformation using falsified material and without any factual evidence aimed to discredit Ukrainian refugees in Germany. See the full debunk at Correctiv (German).
The NewsFront article claims that the German BILD reported about Ukrainian refugees in Germany. But the article cannot be found either in the BILD's archives or through a Google search. The newspaper's deputy editor-in-chief, Timo Lokoschat, called the screenshot a fake on Twitter: "BILD never wrote this report. A complete fake," he wrote on 17 May 2022. A spokesperson for the newspaper also confirmed this statement.
"With a reverse image search with the search engine Bing, the alleged burning house can be found. The picture of the burning house, which can be seen in the fake article, appears in a Youtube video published in 2013. The video shows a fire in Walluf, a suburb of the German city of Wiesbaden. A media report confirms the fire, in which the roof truss of a single-family house caught fire - the building shown in it and the surroundings match those in the Youtube video. The photo from the fake Bild article is thus almost nine years old, and has nothing to do with refugees from the Russia-Ukraine war."
See our guide to deciphering pro-Kremlin disinformation around Putin's war and read our account of the Kremlin's intention to annihilate Ukraine here.