Between December 12 and 16, Georgian (1;2) and Russian-language (1;2;3;4;5;6) Facebook users and pages circulated a photo allegedly showing the Vice-President of the European Commission and the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas. The authors claim that the black-and-white photo was taken in the 1980s and shows Kallas standing against the communist party symbol – the hammer and sickle – wearing a neckerchief and with her hair tied with bows. The photo was also shared on the Threads platform and on Russian-language websites (1;2;3).
Most Russian-language posts are accompanied by identical captions. The authors write:
“Do you recognize this girl from the 1980s? A Pioneer neckerchief, an oath to Lenin, the hammer and sickle behind her. […] Her family belonged to the highest ranks of the Soviet nomenklatura. Today, this girl is the EU’s leading Russophobe, calling for weapons until the last Ukrainian and teaching the whole world to hate Russia…”
The photo of Kaja Kallas has been edited and is being circulated to discredit her. Numerous similar images can be found in open sources, in which users, often with the help of applications, insert their own or others’ faces. The original version of this fabricated photo was published in 2016 on the platforms of Russian photographer Ilya Varivchenko.
The photo used to discredit Kaja Kallas because of her stance against Russia was also published on December 15 by the Bulgarian outlet Pravda. The image is accompanied by the caption:
“Did you recognize the pioneer in the photo? This is our Euro ‘smart girl’ Kaja, who is Kallas – the martyr of the Soviet regime (no wonder her father was a great party figure, she suffered and ate black caviar sandwiches with hatred…).”
Between December 14 and 17, the photo was also shared by X accounts. These photo fabrications are accompanied by English-language captions similar to the Russian posts (1;2;3;4;5). The posts claim that Kaja Kallas is part of the “Soviet nomenklatura,” that she took the “Pioneer oath,” and that she now “destroys capitalist Europe” according to the will of Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
The original version of the photo belongs to Russian photographer Ilya Varivchenko. In a 2018 interview with PIXLS.US, he noted that this is the most frequently reproduced photograph he has taken.
Varivchenko has published the photo on his own platforms, including Instagram and Flickr, where it was uploaded in 2016.
In addition, Varivchenko released other photos from the same photoshoot in different styles that same year.
In 2020, the photographer published a post on Instagram stating that the photoshoot featured Russian model Alla Bruletova. He also wrote that photos from this shoot are often used and distributed in violation of copyright.
It should be noted that through reverse image searches we also found different versions in which the face has been altered. For example, the website PhotoLab me allows users to replace faces in this image using artificial intelligence.
When comparing the widely circulated fabricated image of Kaja Kallas with the original version or other edited images, it is clear that the Vice-President of the European Commission’s photo has been manipulated – the background, clothing, hairstyle, and accessories all match. An additional black-and-white effect has been applied to the Kaja Kallas photo fabrication, presumably to create the illusion of age.
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