Is it true that a billboard was installed in Milan with Zelensky, who is sucking up donations for Ukraine?

In April 2023, news spread across the Internet: supposedly in Italy there is a setup for donations to Ukraine called “Zelensky’s Nostril.” We have verified the authenticity of the video provided as evidence.

The viral 21-second video reportedly shows square in front Cathedral in Milan, on which there is supposedly a stand with a portrait of Vladimir Zelensky and the inscription in English: “Donations for Ukraine.” Moreover, this billboard was shot from several angles. The video also shows that if you bring a bill to the hole located on Zelensky’s nose, the money will be sucked into the structure. The video also has a watermark indicating the Telegram channel “Evening Omarov” (45,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), where the video posted April 4, 2023 with the caption: “The bird on the tail brought it. Milan, April 3.” “Verified” did not find any earlier publications with this video.

IN social networks and on YouTube- the Tsargrad TV channel commented on the news as follows: “Even if it’s fake, it still turned out very funny... The nose of the leader of Ukraine sucks in donations around the clock. No lunch break. Zelensky’s clown nose is already a legend. So many monuments erected around the world." Among other media and resources that talked about the unusual Milanese design is the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets", IA "Anti-fascist", as well as the publication "Staff Correspondent", "Newinform", "Paragraph", "Morning south" And other news sites.

The video gained the most popularity on social networks. So, it was published on Telegram by the channels “Media Russia is not Moscow"(249,000 views), "Putin on Telegram"(225,000), "Ne.Sugar"(203,000), "Observer"(202,000), "Pozdnyakov 3.0"(179,000), "First People's"(174,000), Voblya (158,000), "Operation Z"(140,000), "Bocharik (yep, that same one)"(137,000), "Sheikh Tamir"(130,000), "Ivan Utenkov"(111,000), "Ostashko! Important"(101,000), "Skabeeva"(80,000), Putin TG Team (78,000) and "Coachman"(43,000). For a month on VKontakte appeared more than 130 publications about this Milanese installation. The video is also found in Twitter, TikTok, on Rutube And LiveJournal.

“Checked” carefully studied the viral video and noticed many elements there that indicate digital editing of the video.

First, at the 0:09 mark, a man and a woman walk past the stand with Zelensky, and for a moment, “copies” of their figures appear in the frame a little to the right of these people. The moment the duplicates disappear, the man's nose disappears for a short time.

Secondly, in the following frames on the body of the billboard in the lower left part of the screen you can see the shadow of a hand holding a bill. At the moment when the shadow was supposed to fall on the image of Zelensky, part of it is cut off, as if the shadow was falling under the poster.

Thirdly, at the 0:16 mark a hand with a ring and a watch is visible, and three seconds later the money is allegedly donated by another person who has neither a watch nor a ring - that is, these must be two different people at different points in time. At the same time, in the background you can see the same video sequence: a man in a dark jacket and brown pants walks past the billboard.

In addition, upon close-up, it is clear that Zelensky's image is moving. This is most clearly demonstrated below: the distance between the edge of the poster and one of the scratches (or abrasions) on the billboard body changes.

By searching for “Zelensky Milan” on TikTok, we found video, filmed in the same square in Milan on April 7 - just three days after the viral video was supposedly filmed. However, in the place where the stand for donations to Ukraine was supposed to be located, there was a billboard with advertising Milano Art Week.

Since the viral video spread not only across the Russian-language segment of the Internet, fact checkers from various projects and publications wrote about it, including Open.Online, "Myth detector", Lead Stories, Correctiv, "Vox Ukraine", "Fact meter", Re:Check, AFP And dpa - they all came to the conclusion that it was a fake.

For example, our Italian colleagues from Open notethat the billboard shown in the video belongs to the city hall (this is evidenced by the Comune di Milano logo) and it is impossible to place anything on it without official permission. The press service of the municipality told reporters: “As for the video showing a pro-Ukrainian billboard for fundraising in Piazza del Duomo, the Milan City Hall denies that it is genuine, since no billboard of this kind has ever been approved on the territory of the municipality.” Got the same answers Lead Stories And AFP.

Editorial Open talked and with security officers of the Milan Cathedral guarding the surrounding area, and none of those interviewed had ever seen the installation with Zelensky. It is reported that even without permission it would not have been possible to install such a structure due to the numerous external surveillance cameras - if someone tried to do this, the police would have intervened. AFP journalist appealed with a similar question to an employee of a nearby restaurant, and he also did not see the billboard with Zelensky.

By words Open's correspondent, who visited the site, there is another serious problem: there is very little space in the billboard so that both a poster and a mechanism for “sucking in” money can be installed. In addition, Italian fact checkers drew attention to the fact that in the viral video the distance between the image of Zelensky and the body of the stand is not visible, although in reality there should be one, since the edges of the poster do not fit closely to the frame. No gap indicated and in AFP.

Thus, the only evidence of the existence of a billboard in Milan for donations that can be transferred through “Zelensky’s nostril” is a video consisting of cutting different frames and edited many times. The square near the Milan Cathedral is a crowded tourist spot, but there are no other videos on the Internet with a similar installation, and local authorities and employees of nearby institutions and establishments have never seen such a structure. 

"Verified" suggests that part of the viral video was indeed filmed in a piazza in Milan and subsequently edited, but the close-ups showing the bills being sucked in were most likely filmed elsewhere. Probably, the authors of the forgery printed out an image of the Ukrainian president, made a hole in it, placed a vacuum cleaner tube behind it, and then edited the resulting frames in a not very careful manner.

This is not the first example of a fake about the alleged drug use of the Ukrainian president, and not even the first associated with Milan. A year ago “Verified” refuted several videos at once allegedly proving that Zelensky is taking prohibited substances. And in 2023, we analyzed two more videos: on one an exhibit in the form of a nose was allegedly shown ridiculing Zelensky in a Paris museum, and on friend - allegedly a monument to Zelensky in the form of a nose with white powder, installed in Milan.

Cover photo: screenshot “Verified” / social networks

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

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