Claim: Images show a Soviet victory banner displayed by hackers on the east side of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Tuesday night ahead of annual festivities celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
AP Assessment: Incorrect. The images were fabricated. Berlin police and the company that manages the Brandenburg Gate confirmed to The Associated Press that a Soviet victory banner was not visible this week at one of Germany’s most important monuments.
The facts: Social media users shared photos and videos showing the banner being put up at the Brandenburg Gate ahead of this week’s commemorations.
“Last night, hackers breached the projection on Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and put up a Soviet Victory Banner,” reads an X post that had received nearly 21,000 likes and more than 5,300 shares as of Friday.
A TikTok video that has been viewed more than 198,000 times was captioned as follows: “Last night, hackers hacked the projection at the Brandenburg Gate and reminded the authorities who had defeated them, as German police launched an investigation.” have done.”
Other posts claimed the alleged hack was a response to Berlin banning Russian symbols during events.
But an investigation into the reports found no evidence of such activity famous landmark, The 18th-century city gate symbolized the division of Berlin during the Cold War and became representative of a reunified Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“After reviewing all the findings available to the Berlin police, the videos and images circulating on social media of the alleged projection on the Brandenburg Gate are optical/graphical fakes,” Susan Barahona, spokeswoman for the city’s police force Polizi Berlin, wrote in German. said in an email to the AP.
Johanna Steinke, a spokeswoman for BIM Berliner Immobilienmanagement, a real estate company that manages the Brandenburg Gate, wrote in an email, also in German, that the claim circulating online was a “false report.”
It is not clear how the fabricated images were created.
The Soviet Victory Banner is raised by the Red Army over the destroyed German Reichstag on April 30, 1945. Battle of BerlinIn which the city was taken over by the Soviet Union. German dictator Adolf Hitler Committed suicide On the same day in his underground bunker.
On May 8 and 9, flags with a Russian connection, among other symbols, were banned from Soviet monuments and their immediate vicinity in Berlin. Russia-Ukraine WarAccording to one News for the newspaper World War II veterans, diplomats and other representatives participating in commemorations of the end of the war at these locations were exempted from the regulations by the Berlin police. I was also restricted. 2023 And 2022The year Russia invaded Ukraine.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address the widely shared false and misleading information that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP..
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