Russia continues its attacks on Kyiv. After a period of relative calm, war has returned to the Ukrainian capital in recent days. The bombings were particularly intense on October 10, the day of the heaviest attacks since the invasion of Russia.
According to official information, 19 people died in Kyiv and other regions and 105 people were injured. In Kyiv alone, 43 people were hospitalized that day, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
The images of bloodied civilian victims of the attacks were published by many media outlets and went around the world. A video is now being circulated on social media that questions the authenticity of the pictures from Kyiv.
Claim: “A production of dramatic images for Western media,” writes Maria Dubovikova on Twitter, posing as a Russian media expert. And another commented: “Naughty actors are filmed for Western media to show ‘gory’ images.”
Both post a video on which an apparently wounded woman with a head bandage takes a selfie of herself. Numerous other accounts repeat the claim and write of a “staging” for western media.
DW fact check: Wrong.
The 14-second video, which has been viewed more than 50,000 times on Twitter alone and has also spread, among other things, in Spanish on Telegram and in German on Facebook, shows no “staging” by actors, but actually wounded civilians in Kyiv.
Below a photo, a video shows a woman with a bandage around her head and a bloodstain on her top. To the right of the woman are other people, including a man who also wears a head bandage and has a blood-smeared face.
In the sequence shown, the woman says in Ukrainian: “Take a picture of me, Andrei Andreyich! I’ll take a picture of myself right away and send the picture of my sister to Russia.”
By doing a reverse search of the above photo, we found it to be an Associated Press photo. The photo shows people wounded after the Russian attack on October 10, 2022, according to the agency, and was taken by AP’s Kiev correspondent Efrem Lukatsky. Lukatsky also published the picture on his Facebook account.
Deutsche Welle’s fact-checking team contacted Efrem Lukatskyi and asked how the picture was taken. Lukatsky confirmed that both the picture and the video were taken by him.
In an interview with Deutsche Welle, the photographer described how, on October 10 at 8:19 a.m. local time, he and his colleague from Reuters first drove to the site of the first rocket hit at Shevchenko University and then drove the Ukrainian journalists to the site of another rocket hit followed the intersection of Zhylianska and Lva Tolstogo.
Photos and video of the wounded civilians were taken at the latter location. Lukatsky’s Reuters colleague Vladyslav Musiienko also photographed the wounded, as can be seen in this “NZZ” post.
“Upon arrival we saw people standing against a wall being helped. They received medical care from doctors and also from the military. We filmed this scene first. Next to me there were some journalists with cameras. In total, I would say up to ten people,” said Lukatsky.
In addition to the photos, he himself shot a mobile phone video with his other hand, says the Ukrainian photographer. The 14 seconds in the posted Twitter video also come from this video, which is available to Deutsche Welle in its full length of 33 seconds.
In the original video, the wounded woman can be heard complaining about the headache. Shortly before the cut scene and after the panning at the end, other people who are obviously wounded as well as several emergency services and ambulances can be seen. They were injured by flying glass from a high-rise building, according to Lukatsky, who has worked as a war reporter in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and Chechnya.
We were able to localize the location of the event: The high-rise building that can be seen in the further course of the video is actually the Kiev skyscraper Business Center 101 Tower, the glass paneling of which was massively damaged by the air raid on the neighboring thermal power station, as several videos on the Internet show.
The spokesman for Germany’s Foreign Office, Christian Wagner, confirmed at the federal press conference on October 10 that “there was evident damage to the 101 Tower in Kyiv, which also houses the German visa office”.
In the same week as the rocket attacks on Kyiv took place, the Ukrainian broadcaster “1 1” published a report in which one can learn more about the woman in the allegedly staged video. Ukrainian journalists visited her in one of the Kiev hospitals. Her name is Oleksandra Kyselyova and she describes in detail how she was injured on October 10 on the way from her place of work to the shelter.
In fact, you can still see several injuries on her face, some of which had to be sewn up. In the interview, she emphasizes that the world should see what Russia is doing to civilians in Ukraine. Most of all she wants her sister in Russia to see her hurt face and believe her. Oleksandra Kyselyova also spoke of the sister in the allegedly staged video.
The Ukrainian journalists also found the young man in military uniform who gave first aid to Oleksandra in the video. Oleksandr Myroshnichenko is a 19-year-old student at Kyiv National Economic University who volunteered to treat the injured in Kyiv on October 10. Myroshnichenko wears the “Puls” medical evacuation unit badge on his uniform.
On the Instagram account of the “Puls” unit there is a story from October 10, in which Oleksandr Myroshnichenko can be seen. “Our brother @aamyros saved 8 lives in Kyiv today,” reads the caption on the picture, in which Myroshnichenko (his name is on the uniform) is sitting on the floor, apparently exhausted. The scene where Myroshnichenko bandages Kyselyova can also be seen in the story. Myroshnichenko also posted some pictures from the scene on his Instagram account.
From the same Instagram story, on October 10, Oleksandr Myroshnichenko reported on the Russian missile strikes in a TV slot with BBC. He explains how after the first explosion he spontaneously made his way with other friends to the city center to help the people.
Conclusion: The claim that the civilian victims of the October 10 airstrike on Kyiv were actors is false. The rocket attack near the 101 Tower has been proven to have taken place and the injuries to passers-by near the impact have been documented by several international journalists.
Author: Tetyana Klug
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The original of this article “No “staging” of air raid victims in Kyiv” comes from Deutsche Welle.
