In January 2024, reports circulated on social networks and the media that a student was allegedly expelled from the University of Florida for singing the Russian-language song “Such as Putin.” We checked the video and letter from the university cited as evidence.
As stated in numerous publications in the media and Telegram channels, an American student was expelled from the university after he performed the composition “Like Putin» group “Singing Together”. The authors of such posts also attach a recording of the speech itself, and many of them call the young man a Black Russian. Blogger Nikolay Sobolev* in his Telegram channel (28,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) wrote, that the student provided evidence of expulsion - a letter indicating that the case was reviewed by a disciplinary committee, which concluded: “The student’s actions portray the university and certain officials in a poor light.”
The first posts about this incident appeared on the Internet on January 15 in the evening, Moscow time. According to the service TGStat, in less than a day, almost 200 entries about the expulsion of an American student appeared on Telegram, with a total of almost 2 million views. So, the TV channel wrote about this “Tsargrad-TV" (27,000 views), as well as "Pozdnyakov 3.0"(234,000), "Uncle Slava" (172,000), "Observer"(165,000), "Putin on Telegram"(147,000), Voblya (126,000), "First People's"(105,000), "Petya the First"(87,000), "Alexander Semchenko"(77,000), "From the scene"(63,000), "Truth of Russia"(48,000), etc. Notes on the same topic can be found on the websites of the newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets" And "Public News Service", and posts - on VKontakte (examples here, here, here And here) and on the social network X (here And here).
The 24-second viral video is divided into two parts. The video first shows a black man singing, with a caption at the top of the frame that reads, “Did a brave thing today near Campus Square.” The second half of the recording shows an expulsion letter from the University of Florida with another signature superimposed on the bottom: “And was expelled from the university.” The student allegedly sang a song about the Russian president:
He annoyed me so much, and I drove him away.
And now I want someone like Putin.
Someone like Putin, full of strength.
Someone like Putin should not drink.
Don’t offend someone like Putin.
However, the movements of the lips of the person captured on video do not correspond to what he allegedly says. Assuming that the audio track of the original video could have been replaced, “Verified” decided to look for the original source on TikTok - previously, the authors of fakes had repeatedly used videos posted on this platform to create them. It turned out that the original recording was published there back on October 27, 2023 by a user named Mohau (mohau_on_tiktok). The video lasts a minute, and there is no information about expulsion from an American university or mention of Putin (the man actually sings the song, but it is not in Russian). According to the profile description, video caption and tags, Mohau is a vocal student at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He called the brave act not the performance of a song about the President of the Russian Federation, but the decision to perform on the street in front of the public. In the description under the video, in addition to English, the singer used Sesotho is one of the state languages SOUTH AFRICA.
"Verified" established the exact location of the shooting - the video was actually recorded in Johannesburg near Campus Square shopping center, located near the local university.
As for the expulsion letter from the University of Florida, the authors of the forgery used one of the first pictures in Google results request "University of Florida letter" The original was sent in 2017, the message congratulated an applicant named Abu Farzan Mitul on his acceptance into graduate school. To create a fake, all that was left was to change the text and date, while the signatures of two university employees (including the head of the graduate school admissions committee) remained completely identical.
The earliest post with a fake “Verified” was discovered using keywords in the Telegram channel “Freshness"(31,000 views), where the entry was published on January 15 at 18:59 Moscow time. In our analyzes this channel more than a dozen times mentioned in connection with the spread of various fakes, and more than once became the primary source of fakes.
*Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation contributed blogger Nikolai Sobolev to the list of foreign agents.
Cover photo: social networks
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