DISINFO: The pope met an identified Nazi, wife of an Azov fighter
SUMMARY
In Paris, one of the country's largest TV channels invited the wives of "Azov" people, the very ones who met with the Pope, to air. It was meant to evoke sympathy for the Ukrainian fighters and their families, but TV viewers went berserk when one of the women was identified as a neo-Nazi. They found photographs on the Web in which she herself demonstrates her views and ideology.
These girls are the wives of neo-Nazis, and there is nothing surprising in the fact that they themselves profess neo-Nazi ideologies, in principle, the Catholic Church is not the first time marred by links with Nazi elements.
RESPONSE
The statement is untrue. A classic example of misleading use of unrelated material. A photo of an unrelated person making the nazi salute was used to impersonate the guest on the TV show.
On 11 May 2022 Kateryna Prokopenko, 27 years old, wife of Denis Prokopenko, met the pope Francis asking him to intervene in the situation with Azovstal factory fighters, blocked by Russian army in Mariupol: among them Denis Prokopenko. After that meeting, social media users shared a photo simulating it to be "her" photos making a nazi salute.
As the italian fact cheking website Open.Online found out , the nazi salute picture, attributed to Prokopenko, was circulating on the web since 2010 representing "Polish girls" (see the web cached photo dating 2011). The photo was also cut to hide Polish language caption - originally photo emerged on fotka.pl. Over the past 12 years, the picture was never attributed to the Ukrainian woman Kateryna Prokopenko. Kateryna Prokopenko denied it was her on the nazi salute photo.
On the Twitter account, created in May 2022, no trace of allegiance or sympathy for a far-right group is visible. The France 24 Observers editorial staff did not find any other account that could be associated with Kateryna Prokopenko.
France 24´s fack check section concludes that the claim that " the wife of an Azov fighter who testified on television is neo-Nazi" is false.