In September 2023, a video allegedly captured an advertisement for a special menu that the Kiev restaurant Mama Gochi offers to its customers went viral. We checked whether this video is true.

The video, filmed at the entrance to the Georgian restaurant “Mama Gochi” in Kyiv, was widely distributed on September 20. The footage shows a chalk board on which the campaign is advertised: for 500 UAH, visitors are offered “barbecue with Karabakh smoke” and a shot “for Pashinyan.” With comments, the essence of which boils down to the fact that “Ukrainians are mocking Armenians,” the video was shared, in particular, by Telegram channels “Uncle Slava"(214,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Ukraine.ru"(110,000), "Scott Ritter on Telegram"(107,000), "Ostashko! Important"(107,000) and many others. Also about video wrote a number of pro-Russian Media, the story became popular on social networks “VKontakte" And "Classmates", users also shared it Facebook.

The video went viral in the background. escalation conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh - on September 19, Azerbaijan announced the start of military action. Armenia did not intervene in the conflict. The very next day, the authorities of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic stated about the cessation of resistance, and on September 28, the President of the NKR signed decree ending its existence. Russian propagandists accused in the aggravation of the conflict by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, whose policy (especially recently) was aimed at rapprochement with the West.

Already on the day the video was distributed, September 20, it was published on the official page of the Mama Gochi restaurant on Instagram refutation. The establishment's employees called the viral video a fake and posted their own photos and videos taken from the same angle, including the chalk board at the entrance. In a comment to the Georgian fact-checking project “Myth detector“The restaurant’s representative noted that he contacted the police in order to find the author of the viral video.

All sources that spread the claim share a single video and still images from it. “Verified” did not find videos taken from a different angle, or photographs that would confirm the presence of a chalk board with similar inscriptions at the entrance to the Kiev restaurant. It is unlikely that passers-by and guests of the establishment would not have shared such a provocative advertisement if it had appeared in reality - “Mama Gochi” located in a crowded place, a stone's throw from Khreshchatyk, between Maidan Nezalezhnosti and the House with Chimeras (one of residences President of Ukraine). A search for mentions of such an announcement on Ukrainian-language blogs and social networks did not produce results, as did an Internet search limited by the UA domain zone.

The earliest “Verified” Telegram posts on this topic found were published simultaneously on September 20 at 15:18 Moscow time in the channel of TV presenter Ruslan Ostashko and in the channel “Russia on Telegram" The content of the recordings is almost identical, the only difference is the channel watermark on the video in Ostashko’s publication.

Posts in the channels “Ostashko! Important" and "Russia on Telegram"

The video contains signs of manipulation. The center of the chalk board in the viral video is significantly darker than the edges - this may indicate that the inscription about kebab with “Karabakh smoke” was applied using a computer program during editing. There is no such difference in the photos and videos published by the restaurant owners on the same day; the board is one color. In addition, in the video there is no grass behind the steps on the approach to the restaurant and near the wall of the establishment itself, which indicates different filming dates.

Left: frame from a viral video, right: frame from the official account of the Mama Gochi restaurant (for clarity, the contrast in the photo is enhanced)

Thus, all direct and indirect evidence allows us to conclude with a high degree of confidence that the video is fabricated - there are no videos or photos taken from a different angle on the Internet, and traces of editing are visible on the frames. Moreover, the viral video, apparently, was filmed before the aggravation around Nagorno-Karabakh, and representatives of the Kyiv restaurant deny the existence of such a chalk board at the entrance to their establishment.

Cover photo: still image from a viral video