According to a piece of disinformation promoted in social networks, the Polish magazine, Polityka, published an anti-Ukraine illustration on its cover. One Facebook user published the fabricated cover of the magazine with the following caption:

“This is a Polish magazine, Polityka, which came out today with the following title: Not all rats will manage to run away alive.

P.S.

Why the sunken ship is in Ukrainian colours and who are meant to be the rats according to the Polish magazine? I will not comment on that!”

This item of fake news was disseminated on the internet in different languages. This piece of disinformation was mass-promoted by Russian-language Facebook accounts (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10) and the Russian media as well (1,2,3,4).

The aforementioned photograph was disseminated on the internet in January 2023. The notation on the cover says that Polityka ostensibly used this illustration for the cover of the magazine’s sixth edition. In addition, as opposed to other editions of Polityka, the date of printing of the sixth edition is not indicated in the photograph.

In fact, the Polityka weekly magazine has not published an edition with such a number and cover. There are only three accessible editions of the journal published in 2023 on the official website. These editions are the third, fourth and fifth ones and they cover the period from 11 to 31 January 2023.

The first and second editions of the magazine (1-10 January) of 2023 were published at the end of 2022.

None of the editions of Polityka magazine with a cover similar to the viral photograph from the internet can be accessed on the magazine’s official website or from their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Therefore, the photograph discrediting Ukraine does not belong to the Polish Polityka magazine.

Of note is that Russian sources have a long track-record of doctoring covers of different magazines to smear Ukraine. FactCheck has verified multiple items of disinformation of this type at different times in the past.

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