In October 2023, several stories appeared about unusual events that their organizers from different countries allegedly timed to coincide with the birthday of the Russian President. We checked how true these messages are.
Drone show in Guangzhou
On the birthday of the President of the Russian Federation, October 7, a video allegedly filmed in China became popular in the Russian-language segment of Telegram. The video shows a glowing portrait (allegedly of Vladimir Putin) with the caption “Happy birthday Mr. President" (“Happy Birthday, Mr. President”) over an unknown body of water. “Meanwhile, in China, on the night of October 7, Vladimir Putin was congratulated on his birthday!” - reads the caption for the video in the channels Voblya (137,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) and “Sheikh Tamir» (113,000). In total, according to the TGStat service, the video was shared by at least 70 channels. Notes that the Russian president was congratulated on the holiday in the Chinese city of Guangzhou were published on the websites of TV channels “Constantinople", 360TV And "Moscow 24", as well as in a number regional Media.
Despite the abundance of publications in Russian, most major federal Russian media, as well as official Chinese publications in Chinese or English (including website about the events in Guangzhou) there is no mention of such a drone show.
To understand what the people present in the video were saying, Verified turned to fact checker Masato Kashimoto, currently working at the University of Hong Kong, for help (Annie Lab Team). He said the people in the footage spoke Cantonese, but there was no mention of Putin or the drone show in the short dialogue. The man in the video says: “There are several more berths here. [They] offer tourists an excellent sightseeing night tour of the river delta Zhujiang. And ahead is the Canton Tower.”
Most Canton Tower not in the frame, but the fact that this is really Guangzhou is confirmed by the Financial Center included in the frame - the second tallest building in the city, which is located opposite.
A search for keywords and frames in Google and Yandex shows that video exists in only one version, and apparently it was posted first by the Telegram channel Voblya (October 7 at 12:02 Moscow time), and rare posts with descriptions in Chinese were published much later. Search by photo and video in local accounts and by tags related to the center of Guangzhou and geotagging on social networks also didn't give other results. “Checked” did not find a single recording made from a different angle, although rollersQuite a lot of photographs taken in the evening during the time period of interest to us within a radius of 500 m from the intended shooting point have been posted.
It is highly unlikely that an expensive drone show in the heart of a city of 15 million was filmed by just one person (who did not comment on what he saw) and did not make the local news. Taken together, the indirect evidence discovered allows us to conclude that there was no such show and that the video was falsified.
Putin's tea in the USA
On the same day, October 7, there were about 200 Telegram channels, the largest of which were “Putin on Telegram"(190,000 views) and "Z-News | Army 18+"(125,000), reported that "the American coffee chain Caribou Coffee has released a special Putin Tea with the taste of Siberian herbs for the birthday of Vladimir Putin." The posts are illustrated with an 11-second video depicting an advertising poster with a portrait of the Russian president and the inscription “Dump the pumpkin, it's so last season! Time to sip on Putin Tea with Siberian kick!” (“Forget about pumpkin, it’s no longer fashionable! Time to drink tea Putin’s style with a Siberian charge of vivacity!”). Also, portraits of Putin are applied to the mugs included in the video.
As in the case of Chinese greetings, there is only one video, and there is no information about the promotion on the official website V section October special offers and social networks Caribou Coffee chain “Verified” could not be found. Search by slogan from an advertising poster leads to a site with memes, where only two results are found for this request - both are translations of previously appeared Russian-language publications. The earliest “Verified” publication discovered was posted on the Telegram channel “Putin on Telegram” (October 7 at 14:04 Moscow time).
The interior of the part of the room caught in the frame does not correspond to the design of the American coffee shop chain, as can be seen by studying the video Reels on her Instagram page. Caribou Coffee has a uniform design for plastic cups, coffee mugs and room decoration. Souvenir products available in the online store and presented in photos and videos in the official accounts of the network, radically different from the one shown in the video. Geotagged publications Caribou Coffee visitors from different cities also failed to find even remotely similar advertising posters, room design elements and cups.
In response to a “Verified” request, Caribou Coffee representatives confirmed that these were not their products and requested the video that went viral on social networks in order to discuss it with the team.
Thus, all available details indicate that the video was filmed not in the interiors of an American coffee shop chain, but in another location and with specially prepared props, in order to subsequently pass off the video as an action organized in the United States for Putin’s birthday.
Congratulations from the hackers
Also on October 7, a video circulated that allegedly recorded how “Russian hackers forced Ukrainians to congratulate Putin on his birthday.” The video shows the moment when, during a presentation at an event held in Ukrainian, a portrait of the President of the Russian Federation appears on the screen with the inscription “Happy Birthday!”, and the presenter reports that these are the actions of Russian hackers. The video received the largest number of views in the Telegram channel Voblya (154,000), and also got into the row notes in the media and entertaining websites.
The first “Verified” video discovered was posted in the channel “Ragulyaku on gylyaku” (33,000 views) on October 7 at 15:37 Moscow time (in later publications the channel watermark was erased). In a number of publications indicatedthat the alleged hacker intervention occurred during a certain forum in Kherson. A news search allowed “Verified” to discover that the 2nd architectural and construction forum “Restoration of Ukraine” was held in the same interior. Transformation and modernization". Its participants also used an identical style in their presentations. Is it true, passed the event is not in Kherson, but in Kyiv on October 5 and 6 (that is, even before Putin’s birthday).
Search by various combinations of keywords in broadcasts and videos on Facebook made it possible to discover the original recording. This is a speech by a representative of the Ukrainian Fonda will come (Offensive Fund) at the Kiev forum, laid out on the official page of the organization on October 5th. The fragment we are interested in begins at the 2:35 mark, and there is no hacker intrusion into the presentation on the recording.
The video, filmed two days before Putin’s birthday, included a picture of congratulations, the video itself was cropped in such a way that it was more difficult to identify (the logo of the Advance Foundation was removed from the frame), and the original audio track was replaced with a fake one.
Cover photo: collage “Checked”
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