Fact Check: No, this old woman is not giving invading Russian soldiers the finger
India Today
A photo went viral with the claim that an elderly Ukrainian woman holding a cat flashed the middle finger to invading Russian forces. India Today Anti Fake News War Room has found the claim to be false.
A photo of an elderly woman holding a cat and showing the middle finger has gone viral in the backdrop of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. The photo has been shared with the claim that she is Ukrainian and is apparently telling the Russian soldiers to leave her country through the gesture. Many applauded the woman for her courage and called her a hero.
For instance, a Facebook user shared this photo with the caption, “This Ukrainian cat lady stands up to the Russians. She's my hero!!”
The image went viral on Facebook as well as Twitter. According to Crowd Tangle, this image was posted around 50 times on Facebook in the past week and has garnered nearly 25,000 interactions so far.
The India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found that the viral image is from 2014 and was clicked by German photographer Sebastian Totzke. It has nothing to do with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
We noticed that several people pointed out in the comment section that this image was old. Reverse-searching the image along with a time filter on Google led us to a Facebook post from 2014.
Using the Tineye reverse search tool, we found a black and white version of this image on EyeEm, a global photography platform and marketplace. The photo was posted on February 11, 2014, and was credited to a German photographer named Sebastian Totzke. However, nothing was mentioned about the location of the picture or the lady seen in it.
Totzke lives in the Tempelhof district of Berlin, Germany, and is a musician and photographer. We contacted him for more information about the image and the story shall be updated once he responds.
