Fact Check: Kim Dotcom's Claim Ukraine Defense Chief Wore Swastika Bracelet

A tech entrepreneur sparked a viral conspiracy theory after apparently suggesting Ukraine's army chief had been pictured wearing a swastika bracelet.

Kim Dotcom, the German-Finnish founder of file-sharing website Megaupload, tweeted about General Valerii Zaluzhnyi on his Twitter account on Sunday, with the post subsequently shared thousands of times by other users.

Dotcom is currently fighting extradition to America after the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) branded Megaupload a "worldwide criminal organization" that was directly responsible for $500 million worth of copyright breaches.

But Dotcom, who was born Kim Schmitz and now lives in New Zealand, argues that he was not responsible for how others used the platform. He could face decades in prison if convicted in the U.S.

Dotcom did not explicitly accuse Zaluzhnyi of wearing a swastika and did not directly refer to it in his written tweet; instead the claim was implied in a zoomed-in, circled image. So what exactly did he post about Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces at the weekend?

The Claim

Kim Dotcom shared a tweet with his 911,000 followers that Zaluzhnyi had actually originally uploaded himself, showing a photo of him with other troops near some trees; the background had been heavily pixelated—possibly to disguise the location for security reasons.

Dotcom had included the same photograph in his own tweet, except he had also circled Zaluzhnyi's hand, with an inset close-up of the bracelet on his right wrist. This photo showed a bracelet made up of linked squares, each bearing a particular design. One of the motifs in the blurry image resembled a swastika. The ancient symbol was hijacked by the Nazis in 1920 and it later became synonymous with the Holocaust and anti-Semitism.

Dotcom captioned his own image: "The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine tweeted this photo of himself. Just so you know where the billions worth of weapons from the US and EU are going."

His post had been retweeted more than 3,500 times within 18 hours of sharing it online.

In a follow-up tweet he added: "Nazis in Ukraine could cost the US Govt the support for its proxy war."

So is it true that the Ukrainian army chief wears Nazi-themed jewellery?

The Facts

One of Zaluzhnyi's soldiers took to Twitter to share images of the bracelet in close-up, revealing the bracelet link in question did not feature a swastika, but rather a swirly motif creating four sections within the square. He demonstrated how blurring the image made it appear to resemble a swastika.

He took to his Facebook and Telegram accounts in a bid to debunk the claims there too.

Other Twitter users also claimed they had found close-up images of the bracelet in question which showed it did not bear a Nazi emblem.

And several tweeters claimed they had also found that the picture was distorted when they saved it as a JPEG, creating a bizarre optical illusion of a swastika due to the JPEG compression of the image.

One user even created a video clip blurring and un-blurring a photograph of the bracelet to show how the image was distorted in real-time.

In addition, previous photos of Zaluzhnyi, and old news footage of him signing documents, also showed the jewelry with no swastika visible. He never attempts to hide the bracelet and has been seen wearing it while in a T-shirt with his arms bare.

Dotcom appeared to dismiss responses arguing that the bracelet did not feature a swastika. He claimed, without evidence, that American-run bot accounts were launching a targeted take-down of his tweet, and added: "First they said it's a fake Twitter account (not mentioning that it's a verified account). Then they said it's photoshopped (not mentioning that it's the original photo posted by the account). Then they show us a bracelet that turns into a swastika if blurred. You be the judge."

Dotcom in a comment to Newsweek appeared to double down on his claims, continuing to refer to a "swastika" in the bracelet: "I don't think it is relevant why there is a swastika in his photo. Given the sensitivity of the Nazi problem in Ukraine he should have been more careful."

As of Thursday morning, Dotcom had not removed his post, which remained on Twitter.

The claim appears to align with a false narrative, promoted by Russian state-affiliated accounts and Kremlin supporters, purporting that neo-Nazis run the Ukrainian government.

Putin's insistence that his war is a bid to "de-Nazify" the country is curious given that Zelensky is himself Jewish and lost family members in the Holocaust.

Newsweek and other fact checkers have previously debunked several claims of a similar nature, with one viral post claiming to show a "Nazi wedding" in Ukraine, which transpired to be an image of a wedding in Russia's Novokuznetsk. Another viral photo was of of a Belarusian prisoner falsely portrayed as a Azov fighter.

Newsweek has reached out to Ukraine's Ministry of Defense for further information and comment.

The Ruling

Misleading Material.

The claim of a "Nazi" symbol on Zaluzhny's bracelet is false, and based on a misleading image. Higher-resolution close-ups of of the bracelet in question disprove the claim, while dynamic close-ups show how blurring the image or saving it as a low-res JPEG alters it to make it appear as though one of the square links features a swastika design.

There is extensive footage and publicly available photographs clearly showing the bracelet on Zaluzhnyi's wrist—which he wears openly—bearing no "Nazi" symbols.

FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK