In August 2022, media and social media users reported an unusual correspondence between the president of Ukraine, who supported Taiwan, and the island’s foreign ministry, which responded by asking: “Who are you?” We have verified the accuracy of such publications.

On the evening of August 2 in Taiwan arrived US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the first time in 25 years that such a high-ranking American official has visited the island, which China considers its territory. In fact, Taiwan has not been subordinate to Beijing since 1949, when it moved over representatives of the Kuomintang party who lost to the communists during the civil war. Pelosi's visit, which was not part of the previously announced itinerary of her tour of Southeast Asia, aroused the indignation of the Chinese authorities, who immediately announced the start of large-scale military exercises near Taiwan. At that time, the world media wrote about the serious risk of escalation of the conflict up to an armed conflict.

A few days later, Internet users, followed by the media, began distributing a screenshot in which one of the tweets on the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry account about the escalation was allegedly commented on by the President of Ukraine. It is alleged that Vladimir Zelensky wrote to the department: “Taiwan, we are with you!”, to which he received the answer: “Who are you?”

On August 5 and 6, this screenshot was published by dozens of public pages on VKontakte. Among the largest of them are “Great Russia - this country cannot be defeated!"(393,000 subscribers at the time of writing this analysis), "Russian review || Russia || Putin"(323,000), "Armed Forces of Novorossiya (VSN)"(186,000), "In Makeevka? Donetsk | DPR | Reports from the front"(170,000), "Belgorod first" (167,000), "Yar" (153,000) and "For Mother Russia"(107,000). The photo was also published in Facebook*, Twitter And Telegram. On August 6, Russian media began actively sharing the screenshot: NTV, Lenta.ru, "Gazeta.ru", "Channel 5", "PolitRussia"and some other media.

The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry has repeatedly called the screenshot of correspondence between the department and the President of Ukraine a fake. The first such statements also appeared on Twitter, in response to messages from users asking to comment on the situation. “We believe that this is a fake screenshot and that such misinformation should not be disseminated,” the department wrote. straightaway several users. Note that this happened only two weeks later, on August 20.

On the same day, Deputy Spokesperson for the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed this assessment was given to local news agency CNA. This was also reported by some Russian media, which previously talked about the correspondence between Zelensky and the department on Twitter (for example, NTV, Lenta.ru And "Gazeta.ru") and also "RIA Novosti"

We did not find the tweets shown in the screenshot either in the account of Vladimir Zelensky or in the account of the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry. On August 4 and 5, the President of Ukraine wrote to this social network four times (twice in English and twice in Ukrainian), talking about the negotiations on food security with the leaders of Malawi And Guinea-Bissau. Judging by Zelensky’s profile, he (at least in recent months) does not respond to other people’s tweets.

Our colleagues from Georgia And Taiwan Please note that in the responses to the publication of the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs there are two posts, done by a user with the nickname @romanasame and completely coincide with the alleged correspondence between the Foreign Ministry and Vladimir Zelensky. Account owner @romanasame seems Roman Korobkov, he started a blog on Twitter in February 2014 and made less than ten tweets during this time: he posted materials from Channel One twice, shared links to promotions from Yandex and Tinkoff Bank, and also talked about his own successes in the one-time very popular mobile game “2048.” His last tweet (before August) was dated March 2020.

According to foreign fact checkers, the presence of tweets from Roman Korobkov proves that the screenshot with the alleged correspondence between Zelensky and the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry is falsified. The fact that it was the @romanasame account that showed interest in the post of the Taiwanese department, and then commented on its own tweet, looks very strange, to say the least. However, these two publications date back to the early morning of August 6, while the first Telegram entry containing a screenshot of the “correspondence” that we were able to discover was appeared the day before on the channel “Rokot?? Z".

In the post “Rokot?? Z” contains a link allegedly leading to correspondence between Zelensky and the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry on Twitter. Now, when you click on this link, the social network reports that “such a page does not exist.” There is no archived copy of the page said to be located at this address in the Internet Archive or other repositories. At the same time, the link indicates that it leads to a tweet from the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry itself, and not Zelensky (otherwise his username would have been indicated in the link), also both post The departments shown in the screenshot are now available.

The now viral image also shows indirect traces of editing. For example, under the root post, part of the icon with the number of comments, as well as the lines separating the elements of the post from each other, has been erased. Moreover, the social network usually visually links users’ responses to their own and other people’s tweets, connecting profile photos with a gray line - they are not present in the screenshot. Finally, a Twitter post can be edited relatively easily by changing the page code (previously "Verified" is already told, how a tweet from the former Japanese Minister of Defense was faked using this method), and then screenshots of several posts created in this way, which never existed in reality, can simply be combined in a regular photo editor.

Thus, based on the totality of information available today, it can be stated with a high degree of confidence that the screenshot with correspondence between Vladimir Zelensky and the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs that circulated in August 2022 was faked. Firstly, the department itself issued a corresponding statement. Secondly, the President of Ukraine does not respond to other people's posts on Twitter. The only “evidence” of his communication with the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry is a screenshot that raises doubts about its authenticity and is not confirmed by archived links. Thirdly, the link that accompanies the screenshot in the earliest publication we found mentioning the correspondence leads to an allegedly deleted tweet from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but both posts appearing in the viral image are now available.

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities on Russian territory are prohibited.

Cover photo: Office of the President of Ukraine