Mural damage: "Ukrainian Armed Forces fighter" with graffiti in Dzerzhinsky turned out to be a model

Residents of Dzerzhinsky, near Moscow, succeeded in removing a mural from the wall of the house in honor of the participants of the SVO, believing that it depicted a fighter of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This version was spread by the Ukrainian media, having found a similar picture on the campaign posters of the Azov battalion (the organization is recognized as a terrorist organization in the Russian Federation, its activities are prohibited). As Izvestia found out, in reality, the photo has nothing to do with either the Ukrainian Armed Forces or the Russian army.: It was made no later than 2019 with the participation of a male model in unmarked military gear and published on a service with photos for designers.

Who was painted on the wall of the house in Dzerzhinsky

On the eve of the celebration of the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, news began to spread among residents of the Moscow suburb of Dzerzhinsky that a soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was depicted on the wall of an apartment building on Dmitry Donskoy Street. Screenshots from Ukrainian websites were attached to the photo of the mural on the facade of the building on social networks, where the same fighter is depicted on campaign materials of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the 3rd assault brigade, formed from members of the Azov battalion. The same news was picked up by the Ukrainian media.

In the publications of the Telegram channels, it was clarified that the image was made by order of the local administration for 1.6 million rubles. As a result of the scandal, the fighter on the mural was first painted with the Russian flag and the symbol "Z", and then completely painted over.

A tender with a task to paint a wall with an area of 800 sq. m. meters for 1.6 million was indeed placed by the administration of Dzerzhinsk. Pavel Shcheklin, a graffiti artist and founder of Graffiti Russia, is the chosen artist. In comments to Izvestia, he said that his staff used neural networks integrated with services for designers to create images.

"We used a stock photo service with an integrated neural network, and we set it the task of making an image according to the customer's technical specifications," Shcheklin said. — She gave us an image, as it turned out later, it was an almost unchanged photo from a publicly available catalog. We used it in our work without second thoughts.

Stock photo model

As Izvestia found out, the source of the ill—fated image is the work of Riga photographer Vladimir Poplavskis, made no later than 2019. Poplavskis' portfolio includes tens of thousands of photographs on a variety of topics, including military subjects — knights, conquistadors, Roman legionnaires, heroes of computer games and fantasy works dressed in medieval armor.

The photo used by Shcheklin, created under the search query "modern soldier", shows a male model in an unmarked military uniform. The unnamed warrior was repeatedly used in publications, having managed to be a soldier of NATO, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the Russian National Guard, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a PMC fighter, and a UN peacekeeper.

According to Pavel Shcheklin, the situation with the mural has taught him to be more vigilant with neural networks.

— Now we will draw every sketch, every little thing and daisy by hand and double—check everything out of harm's way, - says the artist.

However, Shcheklin even sees advantages in the situation — he believes that due to the scandal, attention will be paid to other works of his team, created over the 15 years of its existence.

Graffiti Russia will paint the wall of the house in Dzerzhinsky anyway, but on a different theme, so as not to worry the public. The work will be carried out within the framework of the current tender, and additional payments from the budget will not be required for this.