A few days ago, a photo of another 3D drawing ridiculing the Ukrainian president went viral on the Internet. We checked whether such graffiti really appeared on one of the streets of the capital of Belgium.
On February 6, 2023, a photo of 3D graffiti allegedly painted on the streets of Brussels by Polish artists began to spread en masse on the Internet. As reported in online publications, street art depicts Vladimir Zelensky devouring several tanks. “The new graffiti is called “The Last Supper of a Black Hole.” There are also such signatures - “Last dinner before execution. Bon appetit, Mr. death row”,” - it says in some posts.
A photo of street art was posted on the Telegram channels of TV presenters Vladimir Solovyov (256,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) and Ruslana Ostashko (125,000), as well as "Russia now"(332,000), "Bullet" (174,000), "Peacemaker" (127,000), "Uncle Slava"(107,000), "Cartridge"(89,000), "What happened?"(89,000), Putin TG Team (77,000), "Armed Forces of the Russian Federation"(63,000), "Denazification UA"(27,000, and this is the second post, and the first was deleted), "Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation" (13,000) and "Public news service"(10,000). In addition, the graffiti was reported on Twitter (examples here, here And here), "VKontakte" (here, here And here) and on some websites.
The original source of the viral graffiti photo is an Instagram* account. @typicaloptical, the authors of which call themselves “an as yet unknown art group from Poland.” However, regular readers of “Verified” should be very familiar with this name, since we have already written about six 3D drawings from Typical Optical, allegedly applied to the sidewalks of different cities in Europe and the USA: they have already shown Zelensky in the images pimple, feces, locusts And a couple of times in the form black holedevours money. But in fact, it turned out that all the pictures were edited in graphic editors, and that graffiti never appeared on real streets. At the same time, sometimes Typical Optical in its geotags and captions did not indicate the European cities that were actually included in the photographs.
But what if this time the authors of Typical Optical really pulled themselves together and painted a portrait of Zelensky sucking up tanks in the Belgian capital?
A photo of Brussels graffiti appeared in recently created Telegram-channel Typical Optical, as well as in their instagram in the form nine individual publications and a full photo in stories on February 5, 2023. Everywhere there was the same caption: “The last supper of a black hole.” At the same time, we were unable to find the phrases “Last dinner before execution” and “Bon appetit, Mr. Death Row,” which are mentioned in many publications, either on Instagram, or in the telegram of the authors, or in user comments.
According to the hashtags and geotag, the photo was taken in the capital of Belgium. However, on two segments photos posted on Instagram, you can see license plates that do not correspond Belgian. Also across the street is a sign for Jeff de Bruges, a pastry shop owned by Franco—Belgian companies. According to official website, in Brussels (as well as throughout Belgium) there are no such stores.
Previously artists from Typical Optical issued Zurich for Berlin and London, that is, they deliberately indicated the wrong cities and countries, and also in mid-November allegedly painted graffiti in the suburbs of Paris, where there is quite many Jeff de Bruges stores. Therefore, we assumed that the new image could also have been taken not in Belgium, but in another country - for example, again in France. A sign with the word Visions helped us finally establish the exact location. visible in the background of a viral photo. Because the photo of Parisian graffiti was actually done in the city of Saint-Mandé near Paris, we found the store addresses Jeff de Bruges and hairdresser Visions in Saint-Mandé, which turned out to be very close. Thanks to the Google Street View function, we found the right place - this is a small playground in front of the LCL bank branch (its blue door is visible in the photo directly behind the artist).
In addition, “Verified” compared the places where they were allegedly drawn Parisian and Brussels graffiti, and they turned out to be very close - literally across the road. Comparing the clothing and other details in the two photos suggests that both photos could have been taken on the same day. A similar situation was observed with two photos from Zurich: then there were also grounds assumethat the pictures were taken at approximately the same time.
As in previous cases, “Verified” was unable to find any photos of Zelensky’s graffiti with tanks on social networks. At the request of our editors, the project journalist Les Observateurs France 24 TV channel interviewed employees of three organizations located near the site of the proposed placement of new graffiti. Our French colleague called the bank branch LCL, located next to the solarium Sun Prestige and restaurant Le Paris Cafe, located across the street, and all his interlocutors said that they had not seen any street art in that place recently. According to the journalist, some people reacted to the calls with bewilderment and did not really understand what was going on, so he sent them a photo of the drawing to make sure that they had never seen it there.
We found the earliest mention of Brussels graffiti, in addition to the Typical Optical social networks, in the Telegram channel Voblya, where a post with a photo (161,000 views) was published on February 6 at 12:47 Moscow time. This channel more than once came across on distribution disinformation, including a couple others fake 3D graffiti with Zelensky.
In general, the narrative that Zelensky and Ukraine are a black hole in which Western finances disappear has been supported by fake reports since October 2022. Then online appeared an edited video allegedly with an error from an American TV channel that accidentally showed Zelensky’s speech instead of the sounds of a black hole. After that I went series similar fakes.
At the time of publication of this text, Typical Optical's Instagram account deleted all posts not related to Brussels graffiti. Previously, 27 fragments of other photos were published there, and all of them were marked moderators of the social network as “False information”.
*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
Fake
- Is it true that a monument to Zelensky was erected in Milan in the form of a nose with white powder?
- Is it true that foreign magazines published these covers dedicated to Zelensky and Ukraine?
- Is it true that in Berlin a bus with the inscription “Zelensky is a black hole” accidentally ended up in a TV report about the energy crisis?
- Is it true that a poster in support of Ukraine with the inscription “Go forward” was placed in the Paris metro?
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