A couple of weeks ago a photo appeared on the Web, allegedly proving that in the capital of France, artists painted the president of Ukraine, crawling out of the ground and eating money. We checked the reliability of this photo.
On November 30, 2022, a picture, allegedly taken in Paris, was encouraged on the Internet. The photo shows the sidewalk where Vladimir Zelensky is allegedly drawn, crawling out of the ground and absorbing money bills, a bag with a sign of euro and gold ingots with his huge mouth. Near the 3D graphfi on one knee, a man in black clothes, as if adding the last strokes to his work. Near the alleged author are colored crayons and there are spray cans.
The picture became very popular both in social networks and in the media. For example, reports of Parisian graffiti appeared on sites "News"(Moreover twice), "Federal News Agency","Public news service","Tsargrad. Belarus", As well as in Telegram channels"Russia now"(304,000 views),"Bullet"(202 000), URA.RU (136,000), "RT in Russian"(111 000),"Ukraine.ru"(85 000), Putin TG Team (82 000), Daily Storm (39,000), "NTV"(35,000),"Yakov Kedmi"(34,000, already deleted),"Komsomolskaya Pravda: kp.ru"(30,000),"Arguments and facts - AiF.ru"(6000). On VKontakte, public spaces told about the figure "Tsargrad TV channel"(212 000 views),"Yuri Podolyaka, Mikhail Onufrienko Reserve Channel"(86 000),"TV channel 360TV"(65 000),"Radio Sputnik"(15,000) and others.
Although in all of the above places it is mentioned that graffiti is drawn on the streets of the French capital, a little different plot introduced On the air of Channel One: “The influx of refugees from Ukraine is also experiencing France, plus tremendous expenses for military assistance: local residents are clearly tired of all this. Here is such a creativity - in the suburbs of Paris. ”
For the first time, a photo of graffiti appeared on Instagram* Typicalopticalwhere is it laid out November 29. According to the geotheg and signatures, the picture was taken in Paris on November 18, that is, 11 days before it was published on the network. In addition, the description notes the official account of the President of Ukraine and the following text was added: “Hello, France. Give me all your money. Sorry, I'm not sorry. "
A photograph from France is the second post posted in this account, supposedly owned by the art group from Poland called Typical Optical. Previously "verified" It wrote About another 3D-graphfiti with Zelensky's money sucking money from the same team of artists, but in Warsaw. At that time, our colleagues and our colleagues could not find evidence of the existence of such a drawing, and local residents and authorities stated that there was no similar volumetric graffiti in the Polish capital.
In addition to the drawing and its alleged author, in the background of the photo you can notice signs with the names of the flower store La Florangerie and stations First Lines of the Paris Metro Saint-Mandé. These data made it possible to install the exact place where the viral photo was taken: in the parking lot in the city Saint-Manda To the east of Paris. Below are screenshots from the maps of Yandex and View streets in Google Cards.
On December 2, the employee of the editorial office of Les Observateurs on the France 24 television channel visit In the same location where a viral photo was taken. However, according to him, the metro had no traces of graffiti in the parking lot. How reports The factor project “Myths detector”, its correspondent also visited this place, but only on December 3. Like a colleague from France 24, he could not find a drawing or evidence that he was there at all. Both correspondents took pictures of parking, where, supposedly, they painted graffiti.
It can be assumed that in the period from the moment of the creation of the drawing (as stated in Typical Optical, November 18) before visiting this place, the graffiti could erase local utilities. However, the editorial office of the "detector of myths" It turned out Contact the representative of the La Florangerie flower store, located across the road and got into a viral photo. In correspondence, he said that he had never seen a caricature drawn on the sidewalk on Zelensky: “I confirm that Graffiti has never been in the parking lot. This place is washed two to three times a week, and I personally talked with the personnel responsible for the cleaning, who assured me that near (the exit of the metro station.-Approx. Ed.) "Saint-Manda" never there were such graffiti. "
Employees Les Observateurs We talked With five La Florangerie workers - they said that they had never seen or heard about such graffiti. In addition, the French factor contacted the Saint-Manda mayor, and there they confirmed that such a 3D-rosunk on the asphalt never appeared, since technical services are usually caused by cleaning such creativity, which did not happen in this case.
To identify possible manipulations with the image, the editors of Les Observateurs sent a viral picture of Hannesu Marina, an IDLAB-Media laboratory of the University of General in Belgium. He checked the image using tools Mever And Invid Weverify. Although such an analysis cannot prove with one hundred percent accuracy that the photo was changed, the use of some computer methods of analysis revealed signs of photomontage. In particular, Marin discovered that the graffiti area and the rest of the image were compressed differently.
The authenticity of graffiti also questioned several street art specialists with whom I talked The editorship of the French factory project. For example, Girek Le Verzh, the president of the GLV agency, specializing in the street art, said: “We see only four spray cans, which corresponds to four different colors. But there are much more in the figure. There are at least three or four different green, somewhat yellow. ” An employee of the art agency agrees with him Graffeur Paris: “The cans are completely clean, like clothes. It is unlikely that the artist could make such a drawing without staining his clothes or cans. Plus, this is done too well to be true, very rarely there are no traces after any error or incident. Banknotes in the foreground are extremely smooth, this does not correspond to the uneven surface of the asphalt, which is visible around. " According to both experts, at least two days would require at least two days to perform such work. Therefore, I Veru is difficult to imagine that the process of creating graffiti could go unnoticed: “Parisian street art is a microcosm. We would hear about it, there would be other photos. ”
In Telegram, the earliest record that we were able to find, Placed November 30 at 10:22 PM in Moscow time in the channel “Before everyone else. Well, almost. Special operation ”(12,000 views). Earlier, this channel has repeatedly become a “hero” of analysis “checked”, at least three times in it placed fake covers of foreign satirical magazines with caricatures: twice for the pope of the Roman Francis (magazines Charlie Hebdo and Leman) And once on Zelensky, and then it was also the earliest post (magazine Ananda Vikatan).
Note that neither we nor our colleagues of Les Observateurs, Lead Stories And Check Your Fact It was not possible to find any references to the Paris 3D scrapit with the face of Zelensky in authoritative English and franco-speaking media. We did not find a photo of the drawing from other angles, and in all publications the same picture from Typical Optical is posted. The absence of news notes, other photos and evidence of eyewitnesses quite often indicates that the approval in question (examples here, here And here).
Thus, journalists could not find news notes and traces of this graffiti, the authorities and employees of the local store deny its existence, the photo contains signs of installation, and Street art specialists drew attention to the inconsistencies between the scene from the picture and the real process of creating such graffiti. In addition, a viral photo was the first to publish an account, which previously fell on the publication of a very similar fake.
Apparently, the media posts and reports about graffiti with Zelensky devouring money in Paris are another example of the narrative that residents of Western countries allegedly do not agree to support Kyiv and regularly compare the president of Ukraine with a black hole. In Russian state and pro -government media, he appeared a few months ago and is constantly supported by all new publications. For example, one of the first was a fake video that on American television by chance Showed The speech of Zelensky instead of recording sounds of a black hole. After that I went A series of inaccurate messages related to Zelensky, black hole and various European countries. All these messages, as “verified” and our colleagues from other projects found out, are not true.
*Russian authorities They think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, an extremist organization, its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Photo on the cover: @typicaloptical
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