According to many Russian media, G20 organizers welcomed the Russian delegation with a banner with a map of Russia, on which the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions were designated as part of Russian territory. We checked whether the summit organizers actually posted such a banner.
Many media outlets wrote about the updated map of the Russian Federation, which allegedly appeared on the welcome poster posted at Bali airport (“RIA Novosti", "Ren-TV", "News", "Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Kommersant"). Some publications do not specify who hung this banner, but other they write that this was an initiative of Indonesian leaders or the organizers of the summit. According to Ura.ru, thus “the organizers of the G20 summit in Indonesia recognized Russia’s expansion.” Information was also disseminated in Telegram, "VKontakte", Facebook, Twitter, discussions on Reddit and other sites.
September 30, 2022 Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted independence of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions of Ukraine, and then signed laws on the entry into Russia of four partially occupied Ukrainian regions: DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. The UN chief condemned Russia's actions, having saidthat they contradict international law and the organization’s charter. In addition, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that declared the annexation illegal. For the resolution voted 143 of the 193 UN member states, including Indonesia.
That is why the updated map of Russia, allegedly placed at Bali airport at the G20 summit, caused the joy of many annexation supporters. The appearance of such a map was perceived by them as a sign of official international recognition of these territories as part of Russia. Twitter user wrote: “It turns out that the world community still recognizes the annexation of Kherson, Zaporozhye, DPR and LPR to Russia.”
However, this news with a photo of a welcome banner raises a lot of questions. Firstly, we were unable to find a single photograph of the same banner from other angles on the Internet. If the banner had actually hung for some time at Bali airport, where would arrives a lot of Russian tourists, most likely, passengers would pay attention to the greeting in Russian and would share their photos on the Internet. Secondly, there are no photographs of similar welcome banners on the Internet for delegations from other countries. All billboards, banners and posters at the G20 issued in the same style and depict silhouettes of Indonesian mountains. All inscriptions on official materials are in English.
Digital image analysis showed several inconsistencies. The area of annexed territories in the photo has a different degree of sharpness and image compression, which is usually typical for photo collages.
Back search based on the image, it gave a link to a similar map of Russia, laid out on VKontakte by the Typical Bryansk community on September 30, the day Putin signed the agreement on the annexation of four territories. Most likely, this image served as the basis for the photo collage, where the author added the G20 summit logo and the text “Welcome to the G20, Russia!”
So, we can conclude that the published photo of the banner is highly likely to be a fake. Most media outlets that wrote about the banner refer to Telegram-fast edition of “Sputnik Near Abroad” dated November 16, 2022. This is the earliest mention we found on the Internet. Therefore, most likely, it was the state publication Sputnik, blocked in most Western countries after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, that became the primary source of disinformation.
Cover image: Telegram
Fake
Read on the topic:
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