Fact Check : Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy photo did not appear on the cover of Times Magazine, edited images goes viral

Vishvas News (New Delhi). A picture of Time magazine is becoming increasingly viral on social media. The picture is being shared with the claim that Time magazine has printed a photo of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the cover page, saying that he has removed the letters “Z” and “V” in his name in protest against the Russian aggression. The viral claim turned out to be false in Vishvas News investigation. No such photo of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been published by Time Magazine. The viral picture has been edited.

What’s Going Viral?

Facebook user Tanka Gaspai posted the picture and wrote,, “The Ukrainian parliament banned the letters “Z” and “V” as symbols of Russian special operations. The American weekly magazine Time had this news on its cover and wrote “Ladimir Elensky”.

Investigation –

To know the truth of the viral claim, we searched the photo through Google reverse image. In this process, we did not find any information related to the viral claim. After this we started searching on Time magazine website, but we could not find any such picture there. The image is not viewable in the Time Magazine front page archive for 2022 edition. Time has published eight issues in 2022, none of which features Zelenskyy on the cover.

Taking the investigation further, we started scanning social media accounts of Time magazine. We could not find any information related to the viral picture even there. After which it is clear that the photo has been edited and prepared by the editing tools. This photo has not been published by Time Magazine.

For more information, we have mailed Time Magazine. The report will be updated when a response is received.

Vishvas News, in the last phase of the investigation, conducted a background check on the profile that shared the viral post. We found that the user has more than a thousand friends on Facebook.