'Obese Russian General' Story Exposed As War Propaganda

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Jul. 11, 2022

Obese Russian "General Pavel," "67," who the media claimed a "desperate" Vladimir Putin called up to fight in Ukraine after losing so many generals, is actually 58-year-old Ivan Ivanovich Turchin, a veteran of both the Russian military and the Border Guard who retired in 2011, and there's no evidence he's in Ukraine.

Fact checkers Rien Emmery and Lotte Lambrecht with the Belgian media outlet Knack exposed the war propaganda hoax as "total bulls**t" over the weekend.

Remember this "exclusive" story in the Daily Star about "general Pavel", who was supposedly "dragged out of retirement" by Putin and sent to Ukraine?

So yeah, turns out that's total bullshit.@Lotte_Lambrecht and I found out who's _actually_ in this photo. Follow along!

1/ pic.twitter.com/JimbNj1B0A
— Rien Emmery (@ArbiterOfTweets) July 9, 2022

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/https://t.co/qmrPudU4ir
— Rien Emmery (@ArbiterOfTweets) July 9, 2022

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/
— Rien Emmery (@ArbiterOfTweets) July 9, 2022

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/ pic.twitter.com/GS4MLuWUjU
— Rien Emmery (@ArbiterOfTweets) July 9, 2022

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/ pic.twitter.com/kwFrF1J2Ae
— Rien Emmery (@ArbiterOfTweets) July 9, 2022

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/ pic.twitter.com/kiwWnOFPxH
— Rien Emmery (@ArbiterOfTweets) July 9, 2022

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/https://t.co/3iqrOnKpUm pic.twitter.com/HOgSVneFY6
— Rien Emmery (@ArbiterOfTweets) July 9, 2022

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/
— Rien Emmery (@ArbiterOfTweets) July 9, 2022

Our '67-year old general Pavel' turns out to be the 58-year old Ivan Ivanovich Turchin, veteran of both the Russian military and the Border Guard.

He retired in 2011, after 20 years of service at the border in Uzbekistan.

17/https://t.co/bjTtMwCAVd pic.twitter.com/34WuMBE9gw
— Rien Emmery (@ArbiterOfTweets) July 9, 2022

So this 'exclusive' story - first published by the Daily Star, and picked up by The Sun, The Daily Mail, the New York Post etc. - turns out to be entirely fictional.

We have reached out to the Daily Star for comment but have not received a reply, as of today.

19/ pic.twitter.com/a8OWsy7XDc
— Rien Emmery (@ArbiterOfTweets) July 9, 2022

This story was blatant war propaganda from the beginning, just like the story of Snake Island, the Russian "mobile crematoriums," the Russian "attack on the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial" and so on. It was pushed by our lying media to millions as intentional disinformation to aid in a propaganda war against Russia. Mark Zuckerberg, who banned tons of independent media outlets from Facebook for pushing hard truths, is fully onboard with endless Western pro-Ukraine disinformation being pushed on his billions of users and was personally thanked by President Zelensky earlier this year for taking Ukraine's side in this info war.

Though thousands of prominent news outlets were censored for telling the truth and debunking the media's lies, not even one single controlled media outlet has been, nor will be censored, demonetized or algorithmically suppressed by Facebook or Google for pushing these lies.

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