A video of a man painting a swastika on the floor of a shopping mall in the UK is circulating on social media. The security of the shopping center forced the intruder to clean up after himself. In particular, the video was distributed by Dmytro Polianskyi, Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, on Twitter. The captions for the video claim that the man is a Ukrainian refugee. This is not true.

As StopFake has established, the videos have actually been distributed online since at least December 2018, that is, even before the start of the migration crisis caused by Russia’s open military aggression against Ukraine.

The author of the video, as well as the people present in the frame, do not claim that the man who drew the swastika is a refugee from Ukraine. The publications of this 2018 video also do not say that the man in the video is Ukrainian. Most likely, the Nazi symbol was depicted by a local resident of London. Some users pay attention to the fact that a scarf is tied on the man’s head, on which the colors of the Ukrainian flag are supposedly guessed. However, this claim is unfounded. Most likely, this is a fan scarf of some sports team, as indicated by the inscription in the form of "sport fight".

Russian propaganda systematically spreads fake photos and videos to promote the narrative that Ukrainians are Nazis. Previously, for this they used a photo in which supposedly Ukrainian “Nazis” “zigue” at a wedding and a photo of supposedly Ukrainian “Nazi refugees” half-dressed posing for a photo in Croatia. A fake was also spread that the deputy head of the Kyiv police had a Nazi tattoo. Russian propaganda often uses children for such manipulations, allegedly Lviv school children lined up in a swastika on Hitler's birthday, or allegedly Ukrainian children sing the fascist anthem.