Once again, Russian propaganda uses significant events like the Christmas holidays as a starting point to spread disinformation. In December, pro-Russian Telegram channels began to share a news article with a picture of what appeared to be a new cover for a German magazine, Titanic. On this cover, the severed legs of Ukrainian soldiers are hanging above the fireplace instead of Christmas stockings. Let’s analyze this cover.

What happened? 

On December 20, propagandist Telegram channels like Alexander Semchenko (archive), VZVOD (archive), and others shared the news of a Christmas cover for the German satirical media Titanic with the title “Celebrating Christmas with Ukraine.”

On this cover, there is a warm room decorated for holidays. “Severed” feet of Ukrainian soldiers hang above the fireplace — in place of Christmas stockings. 

“At first glance, it’s a cute Christmas vibe, but… cut-off legs of the AFU terrorists above the fireplace instead of socks (they intentionally put the flag there, [for a message] to be clearer). The more you look at this cover, the scarier it gets. A Christmas issue of a German magazine, Titanic: ‘Celebrating Christmas with Ukraine,’” authors of the post said. 

Analysis

The German magazine Titanic publishes the images of its issues and covers on the official website and Х (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram.

We started by checking the published materials on the website and social media pages and discovered that official Titanic resources haven’t published anything like this cover, ever. 

The next step was analysis of the picture propagandists shared. As such, the number of the Titanic issue is lacking on the cover they posted, but it has the following notations:

  • The month of publication — December 2023;
  • “Weihnachtsausgabe” (Christmas issue).

Original Titanic magazine is published once a month. Each issue has a number corresponding to the month it’s published in the format month + Nr. (number of the issue).

The collection of covers for all issues for this year is published on the Titanic‘s social media pages. 

So, there’s no so-called Christmas issue of Titanic magazine for 2023. The magazine’s last December 2023 issue has a number 12 and a different cover. 

Conclusion: Fake 

Author: Anna Ormandzhy

Gwara Media has a fact-checking department and fact-checking bot, Perevirka, which people use to send us news/posts for verification. We debunk fakes and manipulations spread by Russian propaganda — and expose how it’s constructed and distributed. Buy us a coffee to support and cheer up our fact-checkers.