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At the end of June 2023, reports appeared on the Internet that the musician, who burned his Russian passport on camera and asked to go to Kyiv, was trapped: he was allegedly not allowed out of the Yerevan airport due to lack of documents. We checked if this is true.
June 26, 2023 Russian singer and musician Eduard Charlotte published on Instagram* a video of him burning his passport as a citizen of the Russian Federation. Also in the video, the author reads out an appeal to the Ukrainian authorities with a request to invite him to Kyiv to speak and help Ukraine. Later that day, posts appeared on Telegram that Charlotte was “in a difficult situation.” “I flew to Armenia using an internal passport, which I burned. I asked to go to Kyiv, but they are silent there. They don’t let you out of the airport without documents, they don’t let you out anywhere at all. I don’t have another passport, what should I do now?” - it is reported that this is a quote from the musician from his Instagram account.
Posts with these words supposedly Charlotte appeared in Telegram channels “Russia now"(315,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "The world of Mikhail Onufrienko"(284,000), "Russian format"(69,000), "Boiling water"(47,000), Putin TG Team (34,000), "New 🅉 Ukraine❗️"(28,000), "Nikolay Starikov"(27,000), Lomovka (19,000), "Actually in Kharkov" (17,000), "Heavenly" (14,000), "Pavel Onishchenko"(13,000), "Nose" (12,000), "Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation" (7000) and "Cart online"(5000). At the time of writing this text on VKontakte there were more than 90 posts with an alleged quote from the singer, some of which have received thousands of likes (examples here, here, here And here). There are similar publications in Twitter, LiveJournal (here And here) And "Zene" The news that Charlotte currently remains at Zvartnots International Airport is also posted on the websites of Russian state media - among them “Russian newspaper", "Constantinople", "Pravda.ru", EADaily, "Paragraph" And TVcenter.ru.
The authors of many publications, and after them commentators, began to insult Charlotte not only for the very fact of destroying his passport, but also for the thoughtlessness of this act. "Idiot", "jerk", "blunt", "single-celled moron" - these are just a few examples of how the singer was called because of complaints allegedly left on social networks about the inability to leave the Yerevan airport. At the same time, the musician’s viral statement is not in his Instagram-account, not on the page in “VKontakte" Moreover, according to his stories and posts, released after the video with the burning of the passport and filmed in the open air, Charlotte is in a forest or park, and not at the Yerevan airport, although he was actually in this city in June 2023, which is possible understand according to previous records artist.
The primary source of the news about the difficult situation in which Charlotte allegedly found himself is the Telegram channel “but my Yandex wallet” (23,000 views), where the post was published June 26, 2023 at 16:28 Moscow time. Unfortunately, as often happens, the authors of large channels and pro-Kremlin media either did not find the source of information or did not check the description of this channel, which reads: “Parody, satire on political reality. Only verified fakes.” Thus, Charlotte's statement was made up by an anonymous blogger. However, it cannot be ruled out that some users deliberately misrepresented the satirical news as real.
June 28 fake quote Charlotte published Telegram account of the NTV channel. A few minutes later, the creator of the channel “but my Yandex wallet” confirmed his authorship, sharing a screenshot of a post with the words: “Shtosh, I haven’t been on NTV yet.” Without apology or refutation TV channel deleted her publication an hour later, during which she received more than 9,000 views.
Indeed, this is not the first time that fiction from “but my Yandex wallet” has spread under the guise of real news - “Verified” dismantled more than ten cases when publications from this channel were distributed across the media and social networks without specifying their comic nature. For example, earlier this satirical channel targeted the singer Monetochka, who allegedly put Russians have a choice: “Either you arrest Putin, or I will take an oath never to return to Russia.”
Update July 3, 2023. In a conversation with Verified, Edward Charlotte said that he learned about the quote attributed to him from his friends, and called the news “nonsense” created to disgrace him. “The fact is complete heresy. I flew to Armenia three weeks before I burned my passport, and did not stay at the airport a minute longer than expected,” the artist said in response to the editor’s letter, clarifying that he did not return to the Yerevan airport after that. As evidence, the singer also provided screenshots of a photo album on his phone indicating the dates when the pictures were taken.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: @sharl.ot
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