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A photo has been circulating on Reddit, Twitter and elsewhere, purportedly showing Dmitry Rogozin, Russian politician and the chief of Roscosmos, performing a Nazi salute and holding a sign that reads "Whites from all countries unite" (A play on the communist slogan "proletariat from all countries unite") at a 1990s rally somewhere in Russia.

Photo that surfaces a lot on the internet in relation to the Ukraine war allegedly showing Rogozin, center, performing a Nazi salute

In the context of Russia's invasion in Ukraine, it could be a fake.

A time-limited google search yields only one match for 'рогозин "белые всех стран"' before 2014, when the war started, and the single match doesn't seem to be related to the photo; it's a text on Russian nationalism. The picture seems to have first surfaced c. 2018.

Sergey Smirnov, editor-in-chief of the Russian government-critical Mediazona outlet, tweeted in 2018 "I am so tired of the fake with the Nazi-saluting Rogozin" in an apparent reference to that photo.

So, is it a correctly-attributed authentic photo?

Note that there seems to be a legitimate video of Rogozin giving a speech at a neo-Nazi rally in Moscow c 2007, and his Twitter activity leaves little doubt that he's a Russian nationalist and racist. My questions is about the 1990s photo.

Fizz
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the.real.gruycho
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  • 1) Without the image this question will become useless, and if you rely on external pages the image can be removed at any time. 2) What does it have to do with the war when the image is from 1990 and is documented to have existed for many years before the war? – pipe Jun 15 '22 at 07:34
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    @pipe 1) fair point 2) Is it from the 1990s? Is it documented to have existed before the war? It is part of the information war, as Russia claims it is waging a war to de-Nazify Ukraine, and Ukraine supporters bring it up as evidence of the hypocrisy and absurdity of such claims. – the.real.gruycho Jun 15 '22 at 07:46
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    I guess the better question is if it is Rogozin in the photo. Because for me it's hard to recognize him given that he wasn't much of a public figure back then for there to be contemporary photos of him easily available for comparison... – Fizz Jun 15 '22 at 10:40
  • It is somewhat weird how the only saluting hands are from people in the back row... over the posters, which does give the possibility that the raised/saluting hands may have been "pasted". – Fizz Jun 15 '22 at 10:45
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    Some articles ([example](https://medium.com/@zloyodessit2.0/after-ruining-russias-defense-industry-and-roscosmos-dmitry-rogozin-should-return-to-his-roots-b18bb6b68f01)) circulate this photo with another one ([apparent source](https://web.archive.org/web/20180614090736/https://feldgrau.info/2010-09-02-14-35-19/64-2010-09-02-12-20-17/19346-fotoovsyanka-103)), which shows that the signs are about South Africa. You can edit this into your question — it doesn't answer who the people depicted are. (And it's still possible that both photos are edited.) – Laurel Jun 15 '22 at 11:10
  • Reverse image search (Google) shows hundreds of hits, but I couldn't date any back before 2018. All the ones I read/translated had similar descriptions to OP's, so if it's not true, it's a trope with worldwide popularity. – Cristobol Polychronopolis Jun 15 '22 at 16:01
  • Also of note: 2018 was the year that R became chief of Roscosmos, so perhaps why some (Western?) source may have been interested in digging up or resurfacing some more dirt on him that year. Before then he was a Russian government figure, but with a lot less exposure to Western media, I think. – Fizz Jun 15 '22 at 18:51
  • I may be giving too much leeway... Is there really the salute? It seems that there is someone behind torch holding both hands in angle. Shoulder of person holding the sing seems odd for to be doing salute. Maybe I'm wrong, but that it appears to me. – pinegulf Jun 16 '22 at 09:42

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