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The Daily Star quoted an anonymous "senior intelligence source" for the article. It was picked up by virtually every other tabloid in the UK and by a lot of international newspapers. In Belgium

@HLN_BE

also ran the story: archive.ph/166h9 2/

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Reverse Image Search didn't reveal much, apart from the fact that the earliest online version of the photo was a Russian fat joke on Twitter (June 5th) calling our chonky guy the "Commander-in-chief of the Canteen". 3/

Quote Tweet

Электрик-уралозавр

@ElectricReborn

· Jun 5

Главнокомандующий столовой

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In June, the photo also circulated on Reddit, in the r/AbsoluteUnits and PhotoshopBattle-subreddits. Meme-pages were also having a lot of fun with it. But nobody mentioned anything about the actual context of the photo. 4/ reddit.com/r/AbsoluteUnit

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Also, a lot of people were sceptical of the Daily Star's story. 'Pavel' is only a first name, for instance, and some claimed that the camo worn by 'general Pavel' was actually Ukrainian instead of Russian. So I became obsessed with finding out where this picture was taken. 5/

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We resorted to PimEyes and its facial recognition search capabilities to identify the people on the photo. We didn't find 'Pavel', but the people to his left turned out to be local administrators from the Yelansky district (Volgograd Oblast), some 800 km from Moscow. 6/

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Could we find our 'Pavel' in the Yelansky district? Off to Google Maps! Unfortunately, however, there's no Google Streetview available for Yelan, the largest town in the district. But there are some visitor's photos available for its 'Central Park'. 7/

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At about the 50th photo, we spot a pretty distinctive war monument that's also visible in the background of the picture with 'general Pavel'. 8/

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The pavement on our picture also matches the pavement in Yelan's central park. Importantly, at that exact location, there also seems to be a smaller monument in the background, consisting of a red-green pole and a black memorial plaque. 9/

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So we have confirmed a location: a park in Yelan, Volgograd Oblast, near some memorials. But when was this photo taken? Who are the other people in it? And why would 'general Pavel' be there? 10/

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It turns out those red-green posts are Russian border pillars. But Yelan is not near the Russian border. So that leaves the possibility of a memorial for the Border Guard. 11/

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And sure enough, the green hats worn by several people in the photo, including our 'general Pavel', turn out to be the (ceremonial) caps of the Russian border guard. The Border Guard is part of the FSB, not the army. Is 'Pavel' a border guard? 12/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Se

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Cue my colleague

@Lotte_Lambrecht

, who - through some deep searches on Russian search engine Yandex - finds an article on local news site Elanskie-Vesti about a ceremony in Yelan's park on 27 May 2022, with... a larger, original version of our photo! 13/ elanskie-vesti.ru/news/media/202

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It turns out to be a local ceremony celebrating "Border Guard Day", a holiday for (former) border guards in Russia. On Yelansky district's official Telegram, we even find a picture of 'Pavel' at the microphone stand giving a military salute. 14/ kp.ru/family/prazdni

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But even though, at this point in our research, we know the exact location and date of the picture, and even though we have identified several other people in it, we still don't know anything about 'general Pavel'. But that is about to change. 15/

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On the Russian social network Odnoklassniki, Lotte finds a group for border guard veterans from Yelan. And soon after, we find our elusive 'general Pavel'. Who turns out... not to be a general named Pavel.

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