At the end of July 2023, social media users spread messages that in the capital of Japan Zelensky was being demanded to end the war. This is allegedly confirmed by a billboard on one of the streets caught on video. We found out if this recording is real.
The 12-second video appeared on July 30, and its distribution peaked the next day. The video reportedly shows a large screen on a building in Tokyo with the words “Stop Zelenskyy, stop war” written in English. In numerous publications, this phrase is translated as “Stop Zelensky, stop the war” or “Stop Zelensky, stop the war.” Often the authors of posts clarifythat the scene is a special district of Shibuya (many write “Shibuya”). Similar posts were posted by Telegram channels “Scott Ritter on Telegram"(116,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Bottle"(111,000), "Ivan Utenkov"(96,000), "Militarist" (93,000), "Federation" (93,000), "Yakov Kedmi"(78,000), "Release the Kraken!"(62,000), "Banned"(54,000), TG Team Russia (45,000) and "DPR 🅉 info 🇷🇺"(45,000).
In some of the posts, the authors shared their interpretation of the video. For example, in the channel "Russia 2.0"(59,000 views) think like this: ““The whole world is with Ukraine,” they said... Awareness is already coming to people all over the world.” And such an opinion expressed blogger Alexander Semchenko (54,000): “Japan is against the war and Zelensky. The Japanese authorities are for it. And so all over the world. The people are for Russia, the government is for Zelensky. Democracy. Be careful not to mix it up." The most laconic commentary on the video appeared in social networks TV channel "Constantinople"(29,000): "Tokyo is ours!"
The video can also be found on other platforms, including Rutube (examples here, here, here And here), "VKontakte" (public WebM (148,000 views), here, here, here And here), Twitter, as well as some news sites and Belarusian TV.
Really on the record shown Tokyo's Shibuya district, but the Tokyu Toyoko shopping center is visible on the left side of the video, closed back in 2020. According to Google maps, the building was demolished no later than 2022. In addition, there is only one video on the Internet recording the demonstration of this advertisement about the war and Zelensky, and no English- or Japanese-language authoritative media have written about it. This seems unlikely since Shibuya is one of the most lively and popular areas of the city.
The video went viral not only in Russian, but also in English. For example, it was posted on an entertainment website 9gag, V TikTok, and also English-speaking Twitter-accounts, including conservative Canadian media The Post Millennial And Jackson Hinkle - American blogger who adheres to pro-Russian positions (his tweet received more than 1 million views). In this regard, fact checkers from Snopes And Newsweek.
Our colleagues found out that the viral recording is an excerpt from a 108-minute video called “Night walk in Tokyo, Shibuya” - his posted on the Virtual Japan YouTube channel in October 2020. However, in the original video, the building’s screen does not show an advertisement with the words “Stop Zelensky, stop the war,” but images of girls and inscriptions in Japanese. In other words, someone edited the original video by adding an anti-Ukrainian message.
The fragment we are interested in begins at the time stamp of 21:20.
The likely source of the fake is the Telegram channel "TalipoV 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 🅉", where the post with the video received more than 57,000 views and was published on July 30 at 13:38 Moscow time. “Verified” could not find any earlier publications. At the end of June, it was from this channel that a fake video from New York began to spread, where allegedly appeared banner with the words “No Zelensky - no war.” That one is fake similar discussed in this analysis: someone changed a fragment of a video published on YouTube in 2021.
Cover photo: screenshot “Verified” / social networks / Virtual Japan
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