At the end of September 2023, a video began to circulate on social networks in which it was alleged that an employee of the security service of the President of Ukraine got into a fight with visitors to one of the bars in New York. This allegedly happened during Zelensky’s visit to the UN General Assembly. We decided to check if this is true.
On September 24, a video allegedly filmed by USA Today appeared on social networks, which described an incident involving a Ukrainian security guard. It was alleged that he got drunk in one of the New York bars and began to force other visitors to shout “Glory to Ukraine!”, after which he was beaten. This was reported by some Russian media, for example the website of the TV channel “Constantinople" And "Gazeta.ru", as well as such Telegram channels as "Live broadcast"(724,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Ne.Sugar"(302,000), "Solovyov"(301,000), "ZeRada"(251,000), "Uncle Slava"(229,000), "Observer👁️" (218,000) and "Putin on Telegram"(200,000).
The source of this news is a video lasting just over a minute with the logo of the American publication USA Today. In it, footage of Zelensky at the UN General Assembly alternates with video of a street brawl. September 18, President of Ukraine arrived to New York, September 19 spoke at the General Assembly, September 20 - at meeting UN Security Council. On September 21 he held several meetings in New York on the same day went to Washington.
It is alleged that the incident with the security guard occurred on September 21 at The Campbell Bar near the UN headquarters.
However, the fact-checking service of Reuters draws attention to the fact that the video shows a street different from the one where located said bar. The video shows a completely different area of New York - not Manhattan, but Brooklyn. The street where the fight takes place is Quentin Road. Despite the low quality of the video and the night time, several signs can be distinguished in the recording, including Soho Boutique.
Exactly the same sign on the same houses is found on the service Google Street View at 1113 Quentin Road.
This building is not located next to the UN headquarters in New York, but is a four-hour walk away (the journey by taxi takes from 40 minutes to an hour, depending on traffic).
The date of the fight itself could not be determined - faces were blurred out in short fragments of the video, and the recording itself was of too low quality. However, in the fragment of the video where the footage was captured by surveillance cameras, the date is partially visible.
The viral video claims that this is footage from inside a bar where a Ukrainian allegedly caused a brawl. But judging by the numbers, the entry was made either on October 7 of an unknown year, or (if this is the USA, where the month/day date format is accepted) on July 10, 16 or 18 of an unknown year. None of these dates coincide with Zelensky’s visit to the United States (September 19–22, 2023).
After publishing the video on Russian social networks, the editors of USA Today considered it necessary to speak out refutation. Her spokesman said the video, which was passed off as a USA Today story, was never published by the media outlet. In addition, the publication conducted its own fact check and contacted the owner of The Campbell Bar - he replied that nothing like this had happened in his establishment. A representative of the New York Police also gave his comment to the publication and noted that law enforcement agencies know nothing about the incident described in the viral video.
The earliest publication of a viral video that “Verified” was able to find was a post in the Telegram channel “Military observer"(58,000 views), posted on September 24 at 14:54 Moscow time.
Thus, we can conclude that the report about a fight allegedly started by an employee of Zelensky’s security service in a New York bar is fake. The video assembled footage of unrelated locations and incidents and then added the USA Today logo to it.
Cover photo: social networks
- Is it true that before Zelensky’s arrival in New York, the slogan “Glory to Urine” was accidentally shown on the big screen?
- Is it true that the Ukrainian TV channel showed Zelensky sitting in the hall during his speech at the podium at the UN?
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