Two images circulating on social media featuring Russian President Vladimir Putin as German dictator Adolf Hitler on Time Magazine cover have turned out to be fake. Several fact-checking websites said on Monday that the two photos were created by a graphic designer as artwork.
The images are being shared widely amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine that began on Thursday last week.
One of these images show Putin with a Hitler moustache, while the other one is a merged photo of Putin with Hitler's piercing stare and a Nazi swastika.
The viral posts show that these images are part of February 28-March 7 issue of the magazine. Both the images are shared with the text "The Return of History, How Putin Shattered Europe's Dream".
The official Time cover indeed has the same text, but the image is that of a Russian tank in Ukraine during the war. The correct image was tweeted by Time Magazine on its official Twitter handle with the date mentioned as March 14-21.
The artwork was created by Patrick Mulder, a graphic designer, who posted it on Twitter along with a statement. Mulder said he wanted to create something that added to the conversation around the invasion of Ukraine and captured the public mood.
He also called the official Time cover "uninspiring". Mulder also posted a short video which showed how the artwork was created.
Both the covers being shared by users on Twitter and other social media platforms carry his name as watermark.
Meanwhile, on the fifth day of the war on Monday, forces defending Ukraine claimed that the Russian onslaught has slowed but their aim still is capital Kyiv. Reports in Russian media, however, said that they are making progress in the south.
The United States unveiled an unprecedented sanction to further punish Moscow for invading Ukraine by banning all US transactions with Russia's central bank effective immediately.
The action by US Treasury Department will severely limit Russia's ability to defend the ruble and prop up its economy. This new move, along with others taken by US allies, will make it hard for the Russian central bank to use its vast reserves of hard currency to buy rubles.
