Summary

Since the start of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, thousands of refugees have been heading towards the Polish border. According to the Border Guard data, approximately 100,000 people crossed the border into Poland on February 28th alone. 

Around that time, videos showing refugees fleeing Ukrainian cities were rapidly gaining popularity on social media. One of those, published on February 27th, shows a man standing in the doorway of a train station in Lviv. 

The caption of the post: “Muslim man blocks the entrance with a knife only for his own kind … Lviv location. Such refugees are currently being granted entry at Polish-Ukrainian border crossings …they are supposed to officially be medical students, etc … wtf”.

Source: www.facebook.com

Within a few days, the post was shared several thousand times. The post sparked a debate about the admission of people to Poland, not only those of Ukrainian nationality: “They changed direction, no longer through Belarus but through Ukraine, they started to pass freely, and they will host them here, they found a way, or maybe it was done on purpose”; “They rather do not look like students, they should be immediately turned back at the border …”; “In a moment it will turn out that the video is from a few years ago and from a completely different place … No source of information and specifics = fakews!”; “but how does he block, if he lets them in? In the video, every second someone gets on and passes him by”.

The train station seen in the video is not in Lviv, but in Kharkiv

From the post’s description, we see that the footage was supposed to have been taken in Lviv. However, thanks to the diligent work of our OSINT (Open-source Intelligence) analysts, we have proven that it is in fact a train station in Kharkiv.

In the video, you can see columns visible on the platform. In photos taken at the Lviv train station, this type of support is nowhere to be seen.

However, pillars seen in the footage can also be seen in photographs from the Kharkiv station.

Źródło: www.google.com

A bright building can also be seen in the background of the video shared on Facebook. Cross-referencing it with photos of the station, we get the location of the video.

To confirm that, here is a photo of the station itself:

Same video was also posted on Twitter

Additional confirmation can be found in the description of the same video, published on Twitter on February 26th, a day before the Facebook post we analyzed.

Then, on February 28th, a video recorded by the man seen in the posted footage appeared on Twitter. Translating the dialogue, we learned that the man was describing the plight of Moroccans in Ukraine.

As he stated, he decided to act after he heard a story that some passengers would not allow Moroccan women to get on the train. He explains in the video that he didn’t harm or hit anyone, and he did it all to scare people away and allow the women to get on the train.

It is worth noting that Lviv is about 82 km from the border crossing at Medyka-Szeginie, while Kharkiv is situated 1,055 km from that same crossing.

Polish border guards check every person trying to enter Poland

The situation related to an increased number of refugees trying to cross the Polish-Ukrainian border has not caused the Border Guard to suspend any of its duties.

On average, proceedings at the border last a few minutes, but for some people, the Border Guard performs additional checks– precisely for security reasons.

We described in detail the situation on the border in our analysis: “What do we know about refugee situation on the Polish-Ukrainian border?”.

Foreign students are also trying to get out of Ukraine

You can read about the situation on the Polish-Ukrainian border in one of our analyses. We describe, among other things, the circumstances of people with darker skin trying to leave Ukraine.

Among the most popular universities for foreign students, two most famous higher education facilities are universities in Kharkiv: V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University and Kharkiv National Medical University.

Summary

The footage, allegedly showing the train station in Lviv, was taken in Kharkiv. Every day, tens of thousands of refugees cross the Polish-Ukrainian border. All of them are under supervision of Border Guard officers. Non-Ukrainian citizens can cross the border as well, including foreign students.