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Fact Check: New TIME Magazine cover did not show Vladimir Putin as Hitler

Bornika Das
Time Cover

New Delhi: With Russian President Vladimir Putin declaring a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, several memes in the form of videos and photos have gone viral all over the net. He has become the target of people’s curse and hatred as his words for war has claimed the lives of hundreds of innocence. People are comparing him to Adolf Hitler and are blaming him to bring back history.

Recently, a photograph of the cover of TIME Magazine was being crazily shared on the internet. The photograph shows Putin’s image juxtaposed with Adolf Hitler. The image was fact-checked and was later found that a graphic designer named Patrick Mulder created it.

Patrick clarified saying, “I wanted to create something that added to the conversation around the invasion of Ukraine and captured the public mood.” He added that he opted for a TIME cover because he felt “a powerful image deserved a powerful frame.”

The cover was shared by ‘The New Voice of Ukraine,’ an independent news portal. As soon as it was tweeted, the post garnered over 1,500 retweets and more than 4,800 likes at the time of writing the article. Besides, ‘Nexta,’ another news organisation also shared the same cover. 

Netizens also took to social media to share the hard-hitting TIME cover of all time. Here are some:

Fact Checked:

However, a leading daily, The Quint fact-checked it and suggested that the TIME cover which was being shared throughout had a watermark at the bottom which read ‘By Patrick Mulder.’

Checking Patrick’s Twitter account showed that he had shared his artwork on February 26, just two days after Putin’s announcement of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sharing the cover he wrote, “My rework of this month’s TIME magazine cover.” However, this cover is different from the viral one. This showed Putin’s eyes being juxtaposed with Adolf Hitler’s eyes and a Nazi symbol on the former’s forehead.

Again on February 27, he shared another cover which is now being shared as the ‘new TIME cover.’ But this time, it was not mentioned that it was his artwork.

Putting forward a statement on the following day, he clarified, “The image is one out of a sequence of three I created on the day Russia invaded Ukraine. I felt the official cover by TIME was uninspired and lacked conviction. I wanted to create something that added to the conversation around the invasion of Ukraine and captured the public mood.”

Original TIME Cover:

The original TIME cover shared by TIME showed a tank with military forces on it followed by a text which reads, “The Return of History.” “How Putin shattered Europe’s dreams.’ The text was however retained on the artwork made by Patrick which is now being shared as an original TIME cover.

 

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