In recent months, three foreign magazine covers with cartoons on the topic of the conflict in Ukraine have gone viral on the Internet. Among them are the Turkish LeMan, the French Charlie Hebdo and the Indian Ananda Vikatan. We have verified the authenticity of these covers.
Turkish LeMan magazine
At the end of September 2022, a number of public pages on VKontakte and Telegram channels talked about the supposedly fresh cover of the Turkish satirical publication LeMan. It, as described in publications, depicts Vladimir Zelensky in the form of a skeleton with a fallen-off lower jaw. A Russian missile is visible in the background, apparently flying into the office of the Ukrainian president. In the upper right corner there is a bubble with text, which Internet users translate as: “It is important to be able to leave on time,” and above the caricature is written the hashtag #RussianMobilization.
The cover with Zelensky the skeleton can be found in relatively large channels “On the front line"(24,000 views), "Military observer"(467,000), Colonelcassad (350,000), "Kot Kostyan - official channel"(88,000), "Rogandar News: news, facts, events!"(55,000), as well as in Russian media accounts, including "Pravda.Ru", "Moscow region today", "Tsargrad-TV", "Sputnik Near Abroad"and the channel of the special correspondent of the media group "Russia Today" Alexey Stefanov. They talked about the Turkish cover on the website “I cried", as well as on VKontakte in the public Pravda.Ru and a number of others (examples here, here, here And here).
How noted on the official Twitter account LeMan is a periodical publication, usually published once a week. For example, consider issues No. 1592, 1593 And 1594: They were released on September 14, 21, and 28, 2022, respectively. In addition, next to the year on the cover, the issue number from the beginning of the year also changes: 36th, 37th and 38th, respectively.
Now let's take a closer look at the data indicated on the viral cover with Zelensky: it shows the general number 1595, September 29, 2022 and the 39th number of 2022. Firstly, it turns out that this magazine should have been published the very next day after the previous one, and not, as expected, a week later, while the cover did not indicate that this was an extraordinary special issue. Secondly, we could not find this caricature of Zelensky on LeMan’s social networks - nor on twitter, neither in Facebook*, neither in instagram*, - although the publication regularly publishes the works of its authors there.
The actual cover of issue 1595 posted on LeMan's social media in early October: it notes that this is an October 5, 2022 release. There really is a president in the cartoon, but not of Ukraine, but of Turkey—Recep Erdogan. The plot of the drawing is dedicated to opening new metro line in Istanbul.
Note that sometimes the magazine actually had more than one cover, but different versions had the same number and date. You can verify this using the example of numbers 1596 (first And second covers) and 1600 (1 And 2).
We were unable to find almost any mention of this cover outside the Russian-language segment of the Internet - both in the media and on social networks. The earliest publication that we were able to find using the service TGStat, posted On September 29 at 11:35 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “Ukropsky Fresh” and collected 11,000 views. They noted that the cover is “an alternative advice to Zelensky from a NATO country.” A little later picture posted and media manager and former commissar of the Russian pro-government youth movement “Nashi” Kristina Potupchik. True, in her post (64,000 views) the magazine is called Lemon, so there is also such an error in some of the publications.
Indian magazine Ananda Vikatan
Posts about this cover appeared in early November. The cartoon, allegedly published in an Indian publication, shows Zelensky using orange paint to draw a Hindu swastika with dots on top of a black Nazi one. At the same time, the door to the room where the Ukrainian president sits is opened by the new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. At the same time, according to online publications, Zelensky says (translated from Tamil): “What kind of Nazis are we? We are fans of Indian culture!”
The cover was actively distributed on Telegram, the most popular were posts in the channels “Solovyov"(461,000 views), "Ostashko! Important"(112,000), Voblya (188,000), Colonelcassad (383,000), "Ne.Sugar"(211,000), "From the scene"(150,000), "Sheikh Tamir"(155,000), "Truthfulness"(268,000), Putin TG team (98,000), "First People's"(186,000), "Open Ukraine 37# | Open Ukraine 37#"(230,000), "Breaking news" (135,000) and "Operation Z: military correspondents of the Russian spring"(444,000). Among others on VKontakte, the cover was shared in the communities “Solovyov live"(15,000 views, 300 likes), "Yuri Podolyaka, Mikhail Onufrienko reserve channel" (16 000, 420), "World War III"(60,000, 460), "Newspaper | Our Donbass" (20 000, 1190) and "News from the President of Russia"(13,000, 410). In addition, a cartoon allegedly published in Ananda Vikatan was reported on the website Life.ru and in VK group this portal, as well as in LiveJournal, Twitter and on some news resources.
Like LeMan, Ananda Vikatan is published once a week. For example, in October 2022, according to the official website of the publication, it turned out four numbers: 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th. These correspond to issues Nos. 40, 41, 42 and 43 - all of which belong to volume 97 (Ananda Vikatan started published in 1926, so in this case the volume number is equal to the 97th year of publication). The next issue, number 44, came out only on November 2.
The viral cover states that the issue went on sale on October 31, although the website does not list the issue for that day. However, there is no serial number on the cover, since it is noted that this is some kind of special issue of the 97th volume. We tried to search for this picture in the official Facebook, twitter And instagram Ananda Vikatan, but I couldn’t find any special cover with Zelensky and Sunak. Our colleagues from the fact-checking project also failed to do this “Myth detector" and agencies "Ukrinform"
Typically, Ananda Vikatan's covers feature photographs of local celebrities - politicians, actors, athletes and musicians - and there were no caricatures on the covers of the 2022 issues. However, in the Vikatan group, in addition to Ananda Vikatan, included seven more magazines: Aval, Pasumai, Naanayam, Sakthi, Motor Vikatan, as well as Junior Vikatan and Vikatan Plus. In the last two, caricatures on the covers can be seen relatively often.
Junior Vikatan comes out with a different frequency than Ananda Vikatan, namely twice a week. However, in this case there was no issue for October 31st. In addition, the design of the viral cover with Zelensky is noticeably different from the typical design of Junior Vikatan, as can be seen, for example, in the different words and fonts in the titles.
But for Vikatan Plus, October 31, 2022 is not a random day. That's when came out the first issue of this magazine, but Zelensky and Sunak are not on its cover or on the covers of subsequent issues. Moreover, the design of this publication is also different from the one shown in the viral image.
As in the case of the allegedly Turkish caricature, the earliest post we found with a fake Indian cover appeared on Telegram, namely in the channel “Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation"(13,000 views) November 1 at 11:31 Moscow time.
French magazine Charlie Hebdo
In mid-November, reports appeared on social networks again that the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo had allegedly addressed the topic of Ukraine. According to online publications, this time the cover of the special issue was dedicated to a rocket that fell on November 15 in the Polish village of Przewodow near the border with Ukraine. The rocket from the picture shows the Ukrainian flag, and in the background there is an overturned tractor. Near the crater, two people are drawn, apparently defecating in their pants, one of whom swears obscenely in Polish, and the other says: “Volyn massacre 2.0.”
Among the many other channels where this cover was posted, one can highlight “Kristina Potupchik"(51,000 views), "Tsargrad-TV"(28,000), "Ostashko! Important"(113,000), "What happened?"(110,000), "Russia now"(332,000), "Scott Ritter on Telegram"(234,000), "Putin on Telegram"(228,000), "Bullet"(181,000), "First war news"(127,000), Colonelcassad (363,000), "Woman with a braid"(101,000), "Polite people of SVO"(103,000), "Legitimate live"(112,000), "Gasparyan" (74,000) and "Firing"(125,000). Posts with a French cover can also be found in public pages on VKontakte, for example in “TV channel Tsargrad"(22,000 views, 320 likes), "World War III"(90,000, 810) and Mash (286,000, 970), as well as in Twitter.
The incident on which the cartoon is based happened on the evening of November 15, 2022. Then as a result of the rocket crash died two people. How it conveys BBC, Western politicians came to the general opinion that, most likely, a Ukrainian air defense missile fell in Poland. The author of the drawing makes an explicit reference to the Volyn massacre in Poland during the Second World War, when, according to estimates historians, died tens of thousands of Poles.
In the upper right corner of the cover we are interested in, the issue number (1583) and the release date of the magazine (November 16, 2022) are noted. However, neither we nor our colleagues from “Myth detector" And 15min.lt could not find such an image on the official social networks of Charlie Hebdo: neither in twitter, neither in Facebook, neither in instagram. There is no such picture in archive with all the covers on the magazine's website. However, this is not surprising, because Verified has previously written about fake Charlie Hebdo covers that have been circulating on social networks since July: on three Of these, Zelensky was depicted as a dog, and fourth dedicated to a power outage in Kyiv. Moreover, on all of them, next to the name of the magazine, there was also a sign Numéro spécial (“Special Issue”), although, according to the archive, at the time of writing this text the last special issue came out as early as June 1, 2022. And in the lower left corner there is the artist’s signature (Juin), but according to archive, last time his caricature hit on the cover of issue 1574, published on September 21.
In fact, the original magazine, published on November 16th, was no. 1582, and its cover showed on social networks on the evening of November 15, but on the cover 1583 The release date is marked on a different date, namely November 23, 2022. Additionally, the original cartoons on these covers are in no way related to Ukraine. The one on No. 1583 is dedicated to hunger in poor countries, and we will talk about the topic from No. 1582 below, since it is associated with another error that has been widely spread across the Internet.
In the publication of the Mash Telegram channel, in contrast to the post of the group of the same name on VKontakte, completed, that the cover with the Ukrainian missile is fake and that the real cover for November 16 (it was also attached to the post) is “not a bit worse.” Some Telegram channels in general claimed, that the cover with the rocket was “yesterday’s”, and on “today’s” Zelensky is depicted. The claim that the 1582nd issue depicts the Ukrainian president and his “Western puppeteers” (in particular, Donald Trump) was spread across a number of channels, including “Journalism"(22,000 views), "Media khabalki" (35,000), "Bai Biden" (12,000), "Internet madness"(13,000), etc.
In fact, the name of the man from the cartoon is written right on the cover - this is Cyril Hanouna, French television and radio presenter, actor and comedian. Hanouna has repeatedly become the subject of cartoons from the covers of Charlie Hebdo. So, in 2016 his portrayed in the form of a mosquito sucking out children's brains. IN 2017 And 2019 years he was presented in no less unpleasant images. As for the second person on the November cover, it’s not Trump, but billionaire Vincent Bollore, whose last name is also indicated on the Charlie Hebdo website. The drawing appears to be based on a recent incident in which Hanouna insulted MP who criticized Bollore. The fact is that the billionaire owns a large stake in the media company Vivendi, which owns the C8 channel, broadcasting transmission of Hanunah. Therefore, the presenter was depicted as a doll controlled by Bollore.
This time, the earliest publication we discovered was again in the Telegram channel - only now in the Putin TG team, where the post with the cartoon was published November 16 at 11:52 Moscow time and received 325,000 views.
Thus, all three covers considered turned out to be fakes, which were distributed by approximately the same Telegram channels and public pages, and the earliest posts were published in almost the same period of time, from 11:30 to 12:00 Moscow time. In addition, in each case there are some inaccuracies on the covers related to dates and numbers. Let us recall that “Verified” previously wrote about fake magazine covers Titanic, Mad And El Jueves, which spread on Telegram and social networks.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: collage “Verified” / social networks
Fake
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