Remember this "exclusive" story in the Daily Star about "general Pavel", who was supposedly "dragged out of retirement" by Putin and sent to Ukraine? [The "obese general" story was completely fictional.]

Twitter (via Threadreader) ^ | July 8th, 2022 | Rien Emmery

[Ultra Sonic 007]

Remember this "exclusive" story in the Daily Star about "general Pavel", who was supposedly "dragged out of retirement" by Putin and sent to Ukraine?

So yeah, turns out that's total bullshit.

@Lotte_Lambrecht and I found out who's _actually_ in this photo. Follow along!

1/

The Daily Star quoted an anonymous "senior intelligence source" for the article.

It was picked up by virtually every other tabloid in the UK and by a lot of international newspapers. In Belgium @HLN_BE also ran the story: archive.ph/166h9

2/

Reverse Image Search didn't reveal much, apart from the fact that the earliest online version of the photo was a Russian fat joke on Twitter (June 5th) calling our chonky guy the "Commander-in-chief of the Canteen".

3/

https://twitter.com/ElectricReborn/status/1533351479641268224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1533351479641268224%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vrt.be%2Fvrtnws%2Fnl%2F2022%2F07%2F08%2Fcheck-generaal-pavel%2F

In June, the photo also circulated on Reddit, in the r/AbsoluteUnits and PhotoshopBattle-subreddits.

Meme-pages were also having a lot of fun with it.

But nobody mentioned anything about the actual context of the photo.

4/

reddit.com/r/AbsoluteUnit…

Also, a lot of people were sceptical of the Daily Star's story. 'Pavel' is only a first name, for instance, and some claimed that the camo worn by 'general Pavel' was actually Ukrainian instead of Russian.

So I became obsessed with finding out where this picture was taken.

5/

We resorted to PimEyes and its facial recognition search capabilities to identify the people on the photo.

We didn't find 'Pavel', but the people to his left turned out to be local administrators from the Yelansky district (Volgograd Oblast), some 800 km from Moscow.

6/

Could we find our 'Pavel' in the Yelansky district? Off to Google Maps!

Unfortunately, however, there's no Google Streetview available for Yelan, the largest town in the district. But there are some visitor's photos available for its 'Central Park'.

7/

At about the 50th photo, we spot a pretty distinctive war monument that's also visible in the background of the picture with 'general Pavel'.

8/

The pavement on our picture also matches the pavement in Yelan's central park.

Importantly, at that exact location, there also seems to be a smaller monument in the background, consisting of a red-green pole and a black memorial plaque.

9/

So we have confirmed a location: a park in Yelan, Volgograd Oblast, near some memorials.

But when was this photo taken? Who are the other people in it? And why would 'general Pavel' be there?

10/

It turns out those red-green posts are Russian border pillars.

But Yelan is not near the Russian border. So that leaves the possibility of a memorial for the Border Guard.

11/

And sure enough, the green hats worn by several people in the photo, including our 'general Pavel', turn out to be the (ceremonial) caps of the Russian border guard.

The Border Guard is part of the FSB, not the army.

Is 'Pavel' a border guard?

12/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Se…

Cue my colleague @Lotte_Lambrecht, who - through some deep searches on Russian search engine Yandex - finds an article on local news site Elanskie-Vesti about a ceremony in Yelan's park on 27 May 2022, with... a larger, original version of our photo!

13/

elanskie-vesti.ru/news/media/202…

It turns out to be a local ceremony celebrating "Border Guard Day", a holiday for (former) border guards in Russia.

On Yelansky district's official Telegram, we even find a picture of 'Pavel' at the microphone stand giving a military salute.

14/

kp.ru/family/prazdni…

But even though, at this point in our research, we know the exact location and date of the picture, and even though we have identified several other people in it, we still don't know anything about 'general Pavel'.

But that is about to change.

15/

On the Russian social network Odnoklassniki, Lotte finds a group for border guard veterans from Yelan.

And soon after, we find our elusive 'general Pavel'.

Who turns out... not to be a general named Pavel. 😬

16/

Our '67-year old general Pavel' turns out to be the 58-year old Ivan Ivanovich Turchin, veteran of both the Russian military and the Border Guard.

He retired in 2011, after 20 years of service at the border in Uzbekistan.

17/

ok.ru/profile/530054…

His social media are absolutely packed with photos from his past, and several pictures of him attending Yelan's Border Guard Day ceremony, at least since 2013.

His recent posts include recipes, songs and inspirational quotes. Nothing indicates that he's in Ukraine.

18/

So this 'exclusive' story - first published by the Daily Star, and picked up by The Sun, The Daily Mail, the New York Post etc. - turns out to be entirely fictional.

We have reached out to the Daily Star for comment but have not received a reply, as of today.

19/

Many thanks to @Lotte_Lambrecht form @Knack for the collab on this fact-check.

You can read her (detailed) write-up of our research here:
knack.be/factcheck/fact…

Follow her on Twitter for more stellar fact-checks!

20/

My own article (also in Dutch, no paywall) can be found below.

In conclusion: always be skeptical of clickbaity tabloid stories. And let Ivan enjoy his retirement.

Thanks for following along!

ends/

vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022…

P.S. Well, this blew up.

As I cannot keep up with all mentions coming from this thread: send me a private message if you need to ask me something. DMs are always open, especially for fact-checking requests or other tips.

Just a final note: the message here is _not_ that "(western) media can't be trusted!"

Lotte works for @Knack, I work for @Knack and public broadcaster @vrtnws. So we are both journalists for "western media".

(But yes, evidently all media that ran this story should retract it.)

[Ultra Sonic 007]

Images can be seen on the main link, as the HTML embedding apparently didn't pull over completely. You can also view the original Twitter thread here.

But there were a couple of FR threads about this 'General Pavel' back in late June:

Beast from the East! Panicking Putin 'calls up OBESE 280lbs retired general, 67, to lead forces in Ukraine' after 'most of his best and battle-hardened senior commanders are killed' in war

VIDEO: Putin Appoints General Artie Lange to Lead Russian Forces in Ukraine

For all the usual suspects who gloated over this story: be more discerning in the propaganda you consume.

[SmokingJoe]

Disinformation from the Dementia Joe deep state/Ukraine is easier than ever thanks to the internet.
Used to be much harder in WWII.

[kiryandil]

All the FR neocons went apeMitt over this story.

[SoConPubbie]

Hey MarcusMaximus,

Are you an honest actor in this debate?

Do you care to admit this was Propaganda now?

Or, as a lot of us assume, are you just a Propaganda Artist?

[Bikkuri]

Let’s see what the kids will fill the ‘Keywords’ up with this time...

[imabadboy99]

more complete lies and propaganda by the globalist globohomo communists and their media allies.

You neoCONs should be ashamed of yourselves. YOU are directly responsible for the suffering of Ukrainians by using them as pawns in your proxy war that they have no chance to win. All on behalf of globohomo.

[PGR88]

Yes, all the neocon trolls on FR have left is utter crap from the British tabloids which is pure fiction and/or propaganda they are fed.

Even MI6/CIA doesn’t engage in this ridiculous stuff - they save their efforts for much larger disinformation campaigns, and they leave this nonsense to lower level political hacks.

[larrytown]

I'm just waiting for them to bring this guy out of retirement...

[dforest]

The usual Daily Mail neocon war reporters here on FR spread this propaganda mucous each and every day.

[AndyJackson]

What you have to understand is how demoralizing it is to see videos of generals who are supposed to be dead walking around Moscow. Makes me want to lose a couple of pounds, dig out my old Navy Unform, paddle across the Atlantic, Me and Black Sea and storm Sevastopol myself. Or the alternative hypothesis one could form is that we have no clue what we are doing, cannot do anything except make shit up, and sent $40B to Z and his pals to buy up Swiss Real Estate, and realize its a war lost before we even started.

There is something in Sun Tzu about all of this, oh yeah:

Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise: --
(1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law?
(2)Which of the two generals has most ability?

[SaveFerris]

Heh

[CatHerd]

Only one of many, many fake stories coming out of that war.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Most of what comes out of the “mainstream media” in this country is fictional. The “media” continues to spread lies because they know the ignorant will continue to eat it up.

[FLT-bird]

surprise surprise, yet more propaganda and lies.

[cgbg]

The Deep State propagandists can generate fake stories faster than we can debunk them.

That is their game.

Anyone who believes any mass media stories about anything is a danger to themselves and others.

[Krosan]

Here is a list of 11 Russian generals claimed to be killed in Ukraine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_generals_killed_during_the_2022_invasion_of_Ukraine

Please pick any of these and show a video debunking.

[webheart]

Vindman?

[Pollard]

Today it’s the 60th Russian general has been killed. Someone should do a deep dive and see how many of those are actually true. Those stories pretty much all seem to come from dailymail.uk.

[Pollard]

My bad, it’s 6th colonel, not general

[marcusmaximus]