![\\"logo\\"](\\"/img/logo-dpa-factchecking.svg\\"/) *About ![\\"IFCN](\\"/img/ifcn-certificate.png\\"/) ![\\"EFCSN](\\"/img/efcsn- certificate.png\\"/) # Photo of destroyed apartment building was indeed taken on February 24, 2022 in Kharkiv 28.2.2022, 17:24 (CET) There is a lot of misinformation going around on Facebook regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Deutsche Presse-Agentur previously wrote fact checks erroneous videos (here, here and here) and incorrect claims that Ukraine has no would be a sovereign country. This time users claim (example here; here archived) that a photo of an allegedly bombed apartment in Kharkov in reality comes from 2018, from a gas explosion in Russia Magnitogorsk. "That's how reliable the news is here in the Netherlands," it says. ## Judgement The claim is incorrect. It's a hoax about an alleged 'hoax'. The The photo in question was indeed taken on February 24, 2022 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The photographer is Wolfgang Schwan, who has photographed him in various media and published on his own channels. ## Facts It is almost unnecessary to mention that Bild is not a Dutch medium, but German. However, Dutch media have also used this photo in their reporting, see for example here NU.nl. Why? Because the photo actually from a rocket impact in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on February 24, 2022 is. The claim also circulated on Twitter and has already been carefully debunked. BBC reported, like many other media, about a gas explosion in Russia Magnitogorsk at the end of 2018. Here you can clearly see that the apartment building is a different color and has more floors than the destroyed apartment building Kharkov. The photo in Kharkov was taken by Wolfgang Schwan. On his page it is too see which media took over the photo from him, in different variants. Al Jazeera was one of those media and published even more photos of Schwan took the same day. And also posted on his personal Instagram page photographer's photo. If you search for the photo via Google's Reversed Image Search, you can sometimes find a encounter a search result with an older date. However, this doesn't mean anything: new articles with a new photo can be recommended in the margins of older articles. Then the date of publication of the older one appears on Google article. That could be the basis of the fake news about this photo. This In any case, it was taken on February 24, 2022, by photographer Wolfgang Schwan. (State of play: 28/02/22) ## Left Facebook post (archived) Article NU.nl (archived) Claim debunked on Twitter (archived) BBC on Magnitogorsk gas explosion (archived) About Wolfgang Schwan (archived) Article Al Jazeera (archived) Instagram Wolfgang Schwan (archived) Previous dpa fact checks: Birmingham, Tianjin, Libya Fact check about border Contact the dpa fact check team: factcheck-netherlands@dpa.com powered by dpa-newslab | Imprint | Privacy | About:
Photo destroyed apartment building taken in 2018 in Magnitogorsk