A caricature of the Ukrainian president from the cover of a German satirical magazine is circulating on social networks and Russian media. We checked whether Zelensky was really ridiculed like that in Germany.
The image we are interested in appeared on the Internet on at least October 24, 2022. On it, Vladimir Zelensky’s mouth is presented in the form of a black hole, sucking in various objects: bags of money and individual banknotes, cartridges, missiles, weapons, military equipment, etc. A dark-skinned man in a suit with a red tie and a woman in a red dress are also drawn below. The German caption on the picture reads: “Ewiger appetit” (“Endless appetite”). In the upper left corner is the name of the magazine Titanic, Das endgültige Satiremagazin, and in the right is the cost of the issue and its number.
Presenter of the NTV channel commented the appearance of this cartoon: “German journalists once again ridiculed the growing appetites of Kyiv. Here is the cover of Titanic magazine, popular in Germany, with a black hole in the image of Zelensky.” On its pages in "VKontakte" And Telegram The Tsargrad TV channel also shared the picture, while mentioning a technical error on American television, when they allegedly accidentally included Zelensky’s speech instead of recording the sounds of a black hole. In general, the cover was widely circulated on public pages on VKontakte, including “The incident is tough"(36,000 views, 160 likes), "There is strength in truth"(15,000, 190) and "Newspaper | Our Donbass"(11 000, 1170), as well as via Telegram channels "Signal"(24,000 views), "Yakov Kedmi"(57,000), Putin TG Team (355,000), "Truthfulness"(318,000), "Bullet"(199,000), etc.
Let's start with the fact that the people depicted at the bottom of the cover are American television presenters Evrod Kassimi And Rhonda Walker. They are depicted wearing the same clothes they were wearing during the WDIV Local 4 News broadcast, when, according to numerous Russian media outlets, there was a technical glitch and instead of a video with recorded sounds of a black hole, they showed a speech by the Ukrainian president. We already wrote about this incident in our other analysis: it turned out that the video was falsified, but nothing like that happened on air. Later, new reports appeared: supposedly in Warsaw, local artists painted 3D graffiti with Zelensky also in the image of a black hole, but this story too turned out to be a fake.
As for the cover of Titanic magazine, our foreign colleagues-fact-checkers from the projects “Myth detector", "Vox Ukraine", Reuters And Factcheck.ge.
Firstly, the image in question indicates that this is an October issue (Oktober 2022). Titanic is a monthly publication, with new issues released at the end of the month. As written on the official website of the magazine, the October issue was released September 30, and November - October 28. On the magazine's online store website you can look All cover issues are from 2022, and there is no viral image.
Secondly, the issue with Zelensky’s caricature on the cover is marked as issue 11 (Nr. 11), but this contradicts the official numbering of the magazine. The numbers of standard issues of Titanic (excluding special issues) correspond to the serial number of the month indicated on the cover, that is, the October one should have number 10, and the November one, respectively, 11. Below are examples for different years.
Thirdly, editor-in-chief magazine Julia Matheus confirmed to Reuters that the cover in question was not related to her magazine. Real covers October (tenth) and November The (11th) issues of Titanic are dedicated to the new British king Charles III and the "colonial crimes" against Germany, as well as the "fear of recession in Germany."
Thus, the viral cover with Zelensky is a fake. It appears to have been created as part of a fictitious narrative that foreign citizens and journalists are comparing Ukraine and its president to a black hole sucking up taxpayers' money. In addition, we have already written more than once about fake covers of other magazines related to Zelensky and Ukraine. Among them, we have already come across fake covers El Jueves, Time And Charlie Hebdo.
Cover photo: social networks
Fake
- Are the videos proving that Vladimir Zelensky uses drugs true?
- Is the front page of a Polish newspaper true, reporting that Zelensky will “give Ukraine to Poland”?
- Is it true that Ukraine donated billions of dollars to US Democrats through the FTX cryptocurrency exchange?
- Is it true that the “non-mainstream press” in the United States admitted the White House’s guilt in the Nord Stream explosions?
- Is it true that Charlie Hebdo published an issue with a cover about a power outage in Kyiv?
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