A statement allegedly made by the artist went viral on the Internet, in which she gave Russians a choice: “Either you arrest Putin, or I will take an oath never to return to Russia.” We checked whether these words belonged to her.
Since January 18, 2023, a number of Telegram channels reported that Monetochka (the creative pseudonym of singer Elizaveta Gyrdymova) allegedly addressed her compatriots with an ultimatum. “It’s time for my country to make a choice. Either we are making a turn towards democracy, or we have only a geographical relationship to civilized Europe. On February 24, the anniversary of the attack on Ukraine, one of two things will happen: either you arrest Putin, or I will vow never to return to Russia. I hope there are still people in the country for whom art is higher than the imaginary well-being of the Kremlin dictatorship,” these words were attributed to the artist on the Internet.
TV presenter Ruslan Ostashko in his channel wrote (and twice) that “Monetochka is having a fit of megalomania,” and his post has collected more than 100,000 views at the time of writing this analysis. Blogger Dmitry (Goblin) Puchkov commented ultimatum with the words: “Who are you, a sheep?” (222,000 views). Also, posts with an alleged quote from Monetochka with various sarcastic and offensive comments addressed to her appeared in the channels “Russia now"(278,000 views), "From the scene"(130,000), "Breaking news" (68,000), "Club service"(60,000), "First patriotic"(56,000), "Boiling water" (55,000), "Petya the First" (54,000) and "Russia 2.0"(53,000). Publications about the ultimatum can be found on YouTube And "Peekaboo", V LiveJournal, “VKontakte” (examples here, here And here) and Twitter (here And here), as well as on some news resources (here, here, here And here).
None of the publications we reviewed indicated where or when the singer made such a statement. Accordingly, there was no link to the original source anywhere. We checked Monetochka’s social media accounts, and there was no viral quote there. “Verified” turned to the artist herself for comment, and she confirmed that she had not uttered the phrase attributed to her: “I have never said such words.”
Since publications about the singer’s statement appeared on Telegram earlier than in other social networks and resources, we decided to start searching for the original source from this platform. According to the TGStat service, the earliest post appeared in the channel “Here is my Yandex wallet” (15,900 subscribers) on January 18 at 20:57 Moscow time and at the time of writing the analysis it collected more than 22,000 views. In personal correspondence with a representative of “Verified”, one of its administrators confirmed the authorship of the entry about Monetochka’s “ultimatum”.
This Telegram channel publishes comic made-up news, about which said in the description: “Parody, satire on political reality. Only verified fakes.” Apparently, some users did not notice the disclaimer, which is why they took the humor about Monetochka at face value. Previously on the Internet under the guise of real news separated Another fiction of this channel: about the death of a person during the demolition of the monument to Pushkin in Zhitomir.
By the way, already in the afternoon of January 19, the authors of the channel “But my Yandex wallet” released a playful refutation of his own post. ""There is an order for me." Singer Monetochka called a quote that went viral on the Internet fake, in which she allegedly invites Russians to choose between her and Putin,” a new post begins with these words.
Apparently, the reason for creating the satirical post was the fact that it went viral in mid-January 2023 video from the concert at which Monetochka, together with the audience, said: “Russia will be free, glory to Ukraine, long live Belarus!”, and also showed a white-blue-white flag (symbol free Russia of the future, which is used by participants in protests against the so-called special operation). In Russian media, including “RIA Novosti", RT, "Russian newspaper", "Gazeta.ru", Lenta.ru, "Arguments and facts", Readovka, "Moscow 24", "Constantinople", TV channel "360°" And "Public news service", they clarify that the performance took place in Lithuania, although, according to words the artist herself, the concert took place in another country. On the website Obozrevatel it is stated that the place and date of filming are unknown, and “RBC-Ukraine" indicates that Monetochka performed in Latvia. Having compared the viral video with photographs and videos taken during the singer’s last tour, “Verified” found out that the concert, a fragment of which was widely covered in the media, actually passed in Tel Aviv back in December 2022.
Cover photo: @monetochkaliska
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