Is it true that Daniil Solovyov visited a London gay club? Are the photos of him posing in women's clothing and getting married true? Did the TV presenter's son say that he couldn't join the army because of his contract with a London modeling agency? We verified all of these messages that went viral in February 2023.
Is it true that Daniil Solovyov signed a contract with a London modeling agency?
In mid-February 2023, information appeared on social networks and the media that one of the sons of TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov allegedly works as a model in the British capital. For example, on February 13 on the publication’s websites Lenta.ru and newspapersMoskovsky Komsomolets“Notes appeared (both have already been deleted) that social network users criticized Solovyov because of this. The media referred to the tweet of American political consultant and correspondent for the Kyiv Post Jason Jay Smart, which on February 12 posted several photographs of 21-year-old Daniil (one of them shows a young man with black nail polish) and said that he works as a model in the capital of Great Britain. At the time of writing this analysis, Smart's post has received more than 2 million views and almost 14,000 likes.
Similar posts about the work of Daniil Solovyov in London modeling agency became popular on other Twitter accounts (examples here And here), on Facebook* (for example, a post about a young man’s modeling career was reposted by a publicist Stanislav Belkovsky), on YouTube (for example, on the channel “Morning of February"), as well as in Telegram channels "Insider UA"(534,000 views), "Ukraine now" (518,000), "Media Russia is not Moscow"(245,000), "Legal lawyer" (227,000) and "Ukr Inform 🇺🇦 new"(106,000).
Let's start with the fact that Vladimir Solovyov really has a son, Daniil, who was 21 years old in February 2023. This has been confirmed more than once by the TV presenter himself. For example, he was on his Instagram* and Twitter as early as October 12, 2015 shared photo of Daniel and congratulated Happy 14th birthday to him.
From a short interview by Afisha Daily took from his son Vladimir Solovyov in 2017, it is known that Daniil studied in Moscow at the Lomonosov private school. This confirms and the official YouTube channel of the educational institution. According to Daniil, in the eighth grade he “was going to enroll in international relations.”
As for the photograph showing a man wearing glasses, a black trouser suit and with black nail polish, it was published back in December 2020, on the Instagram of the fashion brand and hair salon “Kontor” of stylist and TV presenter Vladislav Lisovets; branches of the "Office" operate in Moscow And Krasnodar. The photo that recently went viral on the Internet was taken to promote the 2021 collection, and can be found on the brand’s website other photos with the same person.
The fact that Daniil Solovyov is actually captured in the advertising photo, in addition to the external resemblance, is also indicated by the tattoos that are visible on the model’s chest and fingers. In January 2021, the Russian tabloid Express Newspaper released material (no longer available on the website) about Daniil under the heading “The 19-year-old party-goer son of Vladimir Solovyov lives with a dissolute mentally ill woman.” Since this is a yellow publication, we are not interested in the text, but only in the photo taken from social networks, allegedly of Daniel’s girlfriend. Vladimir Solovyov’s son has the same tattoos on his fingers and chest as the man in the hairdresser’s photo.
Since Daniil really worked as a model for a hairdressing salon in Russia, could he also build his career in the capital of Great Britain? According to his father, he couldn't. On the air of his program Vladimir Solovyov denied news about Daniil’s British work: “Considering that my son, politely speaking, once studied in England, but has been studying at a very good educational institution in Russia for several years now (Soloviev did not indicate the names of both educational institutions. - Ed.), he has never concluded any contracts with any modeling agency in London.” The TV presenter called Jason Smart’s publication a “tsypsochny lie” (TsIPsO is the so-called Center for Information and Psychological Operations, which, according to Russian propagandists, works in Ukraine and organizes regular information attacks on Russians) and accused the Russian publications that wrote about his son of working for “Kyiv propaganda” for money. At the same time, Solovyov called the journalists of Lenta.ru, the National News Service, Moskovsky Komsomolets and TVcenter.ru “creatures, scoundrels, scoundrels, sissies and agents of the Ukronazis” and refused to accept their apologies. He also added that Daniil is a “deeply pious guy”, lives in Moscow, and also “doesn’t run from anywhere, doesn’t shy away from anything.”
Despite the reputation of Solovyov, who had previously more than once distributed disinformation, he most likely did not lie about his son’s work in a London modeling agency. This is confirmed by a journalist specializing in analyzing fakes. Ilya Shepelin and fact checkers Newsweek, who could not find evidence of Daniil’s cooperation with similar British companies in any sources.
How did the story about working in a London modeling agency come about? By words Shepelin, it all started with a post by his colleague, investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov. That morning on February 10 in his Telegram channel published a post about Solovyov’s two sons, who did not volunteer for the so-called special operation zone, which their father encourages Russian citizens to do in his broadcasts. Zakharov also published a photo of Daniil for the Office. Shepelin believes that then a Twitter user under the nickname Vol DeMar came up with a joke based on Zakharov’s text and a couple of hours later published tweet with the same photo and caption: “I’m already a contract soldier! The son of Vladimir Solovyov, Daniil Solovyov, said that he cannot yet sign a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense and go to defend Donbass, since he already has a contract with a London modeling agency.” But although Vol DeMar signed on Zakharov and obviously watching behind his work, the author of the joke is different.
In his video, Shepelin said that the joke soon went viral. Russian, so English language and was taken seriously by many, and at some point its authorship was allegedly attributed to Stanislav Belkovsky, because in some publications the posts are signed with two letters - SB. In fact, SB is an abbreviation for the satirical Telegram channel “Soviet Belarus”, where the post appeared just half an hour after Zakharov’s recording. About this channel "Verified" already wrote in analyzing the claim that in Belarus women were called for “reproductive mobilization”.
Satirical news
Is it true that the photo shows Daniil Solovyov in women's clothing and with black extended nails?
Often, publications about the son of Vladimir Solovyov and his work as a fashion model abroad are accompanied by a photograph depicting a man with long extended nails and, allegedly, wearing women’s clothing. So, on the website Day.ru in a note with this photo noted, that Daniil “does not hesitate to try on various images, including female ones.”
This photograph allegedly of Daniil Solovyov is also found on websites UNIAN, NewTimes.kz, Telegraph, in Telegram channels Nexta live (382,000 views), UNIAN (338,000) and "Country politics» (70,000), as well as on Twitter (for example here, here And here).
On the air of his program Vladimir Solovyov denied, as if Daniel is captured in a viral photo: “This is a photo of a man who is anyone, but definitely not my son. But this (Telegram channel post. - Ed.) "NeMalakhov"They're famous p****s."
Identity of the person in the photo installed Newsweek fact checkers. It turned out that this is indeed a model named Solovyov, but not Daniil, but Tommy, who in January 2023 hit to the list of 50 bright young talents in Ireland according to The Irish Times. It states that Tommy is the 18-year-old son of Ukrainians who moved to Ireland more than 20 years ago and live in County Meath in the east of the country. Photo that went viral posted on his Instagram on January 1 this year.
Newsweek journalists also contacted the modeling agency NotAnotherInt, representing Tommy Solovyov and based in Dublin. They confirmed that the photo shows “model Tommy Solovyov, who has nothing to do with Vladimir Solovyov,” and called reports that it was Daniil “misinformation.”
It is likely that Daniil Solovyov was associated with this photo by the same satirical Telegram channel “Soviet Belarus”. There is a photo there on the evening of February 12 posted with a humorous caption: “Vladimir Solovyov’s son Daniil Solovyov: “The destruction of a nation begins with the decomposition of a woman. I absorbed this truth with my father’s milk.” There may be earlier entries on the Internet, but we did not find them.
Not true
Is it true that Daniil Solovyov visited a gay club in London?
A couple of days later, publications appeared in the media and social networks that Daniil Solovyov was noticed in one of the British gay clubs, after which he took part in an orgy. At the same time, the authors of news items and posts refer to the British tabloid The Sun and sometimes provide a screenshot of supposedly original material on the publication’s website for February 15. The viral image carries the caption: "Daniil Solovyov, the 21-year-old son of propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, was spotted at a gay club in London and at a subsequent orgy, where friends called him Blondie." There are also several photographs in the screenshot: on the first, Vladimir Solovyov with children, including Daniil, on the second, Tommy Solovyov, whom we wrote about above, and on the third, a sign of the London gay club G-A-Y with rainbow flags (picture taken from the photo database Shutterstock).
Texts about Daniel with reference to The Sun were published on the websites “Dialog.ua"(it is noted that the material was removed from the website of the British tabloid on the morning of February 16, and "according to readers, it managed to hang in the feed for less than a day"), "2+2", "NickVesti", "TSN"(the authors of the note claim that there is no material on The Sun website) and the Israeli news agency "Cursor"(the message emphasizes that the material has been deleted). Screenshot of a British newspaper article widely broke up on social networks, for example in Twitter, Where tweet Nexta received almost 830,000 views and 6,700 likes. Other resources that post a viral image or mention it include Telegram (examples here, here And here), "VKontakte", Reddit, "I cried», JoyReactor And YouTube.
“Verified” studied The Sun website and could not find material about Daniil Solovyov there. Since none of the publications we reviewed that referenced the tabloid provided a specific link to the article, we were also unable to find an archived copy of it.
The viral screenshot indicates that the authors of the note about Solovyov’s son are reporters Jacob Jaffa And Tom Hussey. Having checked their texts, published in mid-February 2023, we found material that was posted and updated at the same time (February 15 at 17:53 and February 16 at 07:56 respectively) as the text about Daniel. However, it is dedicated not to the leisure time of the son of a Russian propagandist in a London gay club, but to the disappearance of a British citizen. This publication used other photos and the headline: “Commotion over Nikola. Police investigating the case of Nicola Bulley said officers were called to her home in the weeks before her mum disappeared.”
The Internet Archive has several copies of this material for different days, starting from February 15, so you can make sure that the text about Solovyov was not replaced with another. In addition, in the viral screenshot you can notice the absence of part of the line separating the title, information about the authors and updates of the article from the rest of the text (underlined by the yellow line in the collage). This most likely indicates that the screenshot was inaccurately faked using a graphics editor.
Fake
Is it true that the photo shows the wedding of Daniil Solovyov with a man?
After reports of Daniil Solovyov visiting a gay club, publications appeared on the Internet about his wedding with a man. The authors of such posts claim that the son of a Russian propagandist entered into a secret marriage with the son of Russian State Duma deputy Elena Mizulina Nikolai. At the same time, the wedding allegedly took place in an Orthodox church in the Bahamas. Such publications are accompanied by one or more photos depicting a couple of men kissing and hugging on the ocean shore.
This story, in comparison with those discussed above, did not spread as widely and mainly on social networks. Posts about Daniel's wedding appeared on Facebook (examples here, here And here), Twitter (here, here And here), "VKontakte" (here, here And here), Telegram (here, here, here And here - a total of 69,000 views), LiveJournal, as well as on the Ukrainian news site Aspi.
Although one of the men in the photographs resembles Daniil Solovyov in some ways, it is again not him. Having carried out the reverse search Based on the picture, we found out that these images have been available on the Internet since October 2017. On October 13, on their Twitter published model Thad Nelson (pictured with dark hair) and wrote that this was his wedding, which took place on September 9, 2017 (Daniil Solovyov was 15 years old at that time). The man with blond hair, who was probably confused with Daniil, is model Aren Muse. He posted photo on his Instagram, and, according to the geotag, the pictures were taken not in the Bahamas, but in Southern California.
*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” / @thadnelson (Twitter) / @contora_lisovets (Instagram) / @tomovyov (Instagram) / Shutterstock / social networks
Not true
- Is it true that a photograph of Putin’s son and Kabaeva appeared on the Internet?
- Is it true that Dmitry Medvedev’s son’s American visa was revoked and he was ordered to leave the United States within 48 hours?
- Did Stalin say: “The son is not responsible for his father”?
- MythDetector. "What do we know about Danil Solovyov’s modeling career, and who is shown in the popular photographs?»
- Re:Baltica. "The photo does not show the sons of Solovyov and Mizulina»
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