A couple of weeks ago, a photo appeared on the Internet allegedly proving that in the French capital, artists painted the President of Ukraine crawling out of the ground and eating money. We have verified the authenticity of this photo.
On November 30, 2022, a photo allegedly taken in Paris went viral on the Internet. The photo shows a sidewalk where Vladimir Zelensky is supposedly depicted crawling out of the ground and sucking up banknotes, a bag with a euro sign and gold bars with his huge mouth. A man in black clothes sits on one knee next to the 3D graffiti, as if adding the finishing touches to his work. Next to the supposed author there are crayons and cans of spray paint.
The photo became very popular both on social networks and in the media. For example, reports of Parisian graffiti appeared on the websites "News"(and 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, publics spoke about the drawing “TV channel Tsargrad"(212,000 views), "Yuri Podolyaka, Mikhail Onufrienko reserve channel"(86,000), "TV channel 360TV"(65,000), "Radio Sputnik"(15,000), etc.
Although in all of the above places it is mentioned that the graffiti was painted on the streets of the French capital, the plot is a little different presented on Channel One: “France is also experiencing an influx of refugees from Ukraine, plus colossal expenditures on military assistance: local residents are clearly tired of all this. This is the kind of creativity in the suburbs of Paris.”
For the first time, a photo of graffiti appeared on Instagram* typicalopticalwhere is it posted November 29. According to the geotag and caption, the photo was taken in Paris on November 18, that is, 11 days before its publication on the Internet. In addition, the official account of the President of Ukraine is noted in the description and the following text is added: “Hello, France. Give me all your money. Sorry, I'm not sorry."
The photo from France is the second post posted on this account, which allegedly belongs to an art group from Poland called Typical Optical. Previously "Verified" wrote about another 3D graffiti with Zelensky sucking money from the same group of artists, but in Warsaw. At that time, we and our colleagues could not find evidence of the existence of such a drawing, and local residents and authorities stated that there was no such voluminous graffiti in the Polish capital.
In addition to the drawing and its supposed author, in the background of the photo you can see signs with the names of the flower shop La Florangerie and stations first Paris metro lines Saint-Mandé. This data made it possible to determine the exact place where the viral photo was taken: in a parking lot in the city Saint-Mandé east of Paris. Below are screenshots from Yandex and Street View maps in Google Maps.
On December 2, an editorial employee of Les Observateurs on the France 24 television channel was able to visit in the same location where the viral photo was taken. However, he said there were no signs of graffiti in the subway parking lot. How reports fact-checking project “Myth Detector”, its correspondent also visited this place, but only on December 3. Like his colleague from France 24, he was unable to find either a drawing or evidence that he was there at all. Both reporters took pictures of the parking lot where the graffiti was allegedly painted.
It can be assumed that between the time the drawing was created (as stated in Typical Optical, November 18) and the fact-checkers visiting the site (December 2-3), the graffiti may have been erased by local utilities. However, the editors of the “Myth Detector” it worked contact a representative of the flower shop La Florangerie, located across the street and featured in the viral photo. In correspondence, he said that he had never seen a caricature of Zelensky drawn on the sidewalk: “I confirm that there was never graffiti in the parking lot. This place is cleaned two to three times a week, and I personally spoke with the staff responsible for cleaning, who assured me that there has never been such graffiti near (the exit of the metro station - Ed.) "Saint-Mande".
Staff at Les Observateurs we talked with five La Florangerie employees who said they had never seen or heard of such graffiti. In addition, French fact checkers contacted the mayor's office of Saint-Mandé, and they confirmed that such a 3D pattern had never appeared on the asphalt, since usually technical services are called to clean up such creativity, which did not happen in this case.
To identify possible manipulation of the image, Les Observateurs sent the viral image to Hannes Marin, a researcher at the IDLab-Media laboratory at Ghent University in Belgium. He checked the image using tools MeVer And Invid WeVerify. Although such analysis cannot prove with 100% certainty that the photo has been altered, the use of some computer analysis methods has revealed signs of photomontage. Specifically, Marin discovered that the graffiti area and the rest of the image were compressed differently.
The authenticity of the graffiti was also questioned by several street art experts, with whom talked editors of the French fact-checking project. For example, Guirec Le Verge, president of the street art agency GLV, said: “We only see four spray cans, which correspond to four different colors. But there are many more of them in the picture. There are at least three or four different green ones, a few yellow ones.” An art agency employee agrees with him Graffeur Paris: “The cans are completely clean, as are the clothes. It is unlikely that the artist could make such a drawing without staining his clothes or spray cans. Plus it's almost too good to be true, and it's very rare that a mistake or incident doesn't leave a trace. The banknotes in the foreground are extremely smooth, which does not match the uneven surface of the asphalt that is visible around them." According to both experts, it would take at least two days to complete such work. Therefore, it is difficult for Le Verge to imagine that the process of creating graffiti could go unnoticed: “Parisian street art is a microcosm. We would have heard about it, there would have been other photographs.”
In Telegram, the earliest entry that we could find was posted November 30 at 10:22 Moscow time on the channel “Before everyone else. Well almost. Special Operation" (12,000 views). Previously, this channel repeatedly became the “hero” of “Verified” analysis; at least three times it posted fake covers of foreign satirical magazines with caricatures: twice on Pope Francis (magazines Charlie Hebdo and LeMan) and once on Zelensky, and then this was also the earliest post (magazine Ananda Vikatan).
Let us note that neither we nor our colleagues from Les Observateurs, Lead Stories And Check Your Fact It was not possible to find any mention of the Parisian 3D graffiti with Zelensky's face in reputable English- and French-language media. We did not find any photos of the drawing from other angles, and all publications contained the same photo from Typical Optical. The absence of news stories, other photos, and eyewitness accounts often indicates that the claim in question is false (examples here, here And here).
Thus, journalists could not find news reports or traces of this graffiti, authorities and local store employees deny its existence, the photo shows signs of editing, and street art experts drew attention to inconsistencies between the scene in the photo and the actual process of creating such graffiti. In addition, the viral photo was first published by an account that had previously been caught publishing a very similar fake.
Apparently, posts and media reports about graffiti with money-eating Zelensky in Paris are another example of the narrative that residents of Western countries allegedly do not agree to support Kyiv and regularly compare the Ukrainian president to a black hole. It appeared in Russian state and pro-government media a few months ago and is constantly supported by new publications. For example, one of the first was a fake video about what happened on American television by accident. showed Zelensky's speech instead of recording the sounds of a black hole. After that went a series of false reports related to Zelensky, the black hole and various European countries. All these messages, as Verified and our colleagues from other projects found out, are not true.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: @typicaloptical
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