Is it true that the mayor of Denver called a man with a “fucking Ukrainian animal” for the cry of “Glory to Ukraine!”?

 The material is updated ↓ 

In January 2024, the news dispersed in social networks that the head of the American city allegedly offended a journalist who, during a press conference, interrupted the official with a Ukrainian slogan. We checked whether this story is real.

Numerous publications report that the mayor of Denver Mike Johnston At the end of his weekly press conference with reporters on the social network X (former Twitter) called a person "Float Ukrainian animals" (Fucking Ukraine Animal). The mayor allegedly did this after the man interrupted him with a cry of “Glory to Ukraine!”. The authors of some posts They thinkthat this situation shows the real attitude of many Americans towards Ukrainians. Some at the same time Markthat Johnston - representative US Democratic Party, which is more active than opponents-republicans supports Further allocation of military assistance to Kyiv.

Similar records appeared in the social networks of the Constantinople TV channel (Telegram, "VKontakte" And "Classmates"), In Telegram channels of the TV presenter Ruslan Ostashko (112,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), publication "Ukraine.ru"(137 000), radio host Armen Gasparyan (74,000), showman Oscars Kuchera (33,000), as well as in channels "Sanya in Florida"(456 000),"Three heroes and Zelensky addict"(191 000), Zergulio (190 000), "Petya the first"(97 000),"Scott Ritter in Telegram"(90 000),"Alexander Semchenko"(91 000),"Mriya"(68 000), Lomovka (64,000), "Forbidden Ukraine"(44,000),"Russian format"(42 000) and"Vladimir Rogov"(38 000). Similar posts are found in public in "VKontakte" social networks X And on Some Russian -speaking news sites.

In all found publications found, there are no links to the source of information, and the evidence is given a video of the voice chat in the social network X and the screenshot from the news report, which supposedly tells about the scandal. Below we will separately analyze these two materials.

Video

The viral seven -end video, judging by the interface, is a record Audio rooms in X called CPR Denver News. It is probably assumed that the conference organized Colorado Public Radioalthough in social networks it is called simply CPR Newssince the radio broadcasts Not only for Denver, but for the whole state. In the frame, the profiles of four participants in the conversation are visible - among them Johnston and a person who has in the profile photo Independence of Ukraine and Ukrainian flag. The video heard the following conversation:

- Of course, we must ask questions ...
- Glory to Ukraine!
- Sorry guys. Excuse me, [this] fucking Ukrainian animal. Sorry.

"Checked" Not found traces or references to such a press conference neither in the American media (including Radio station CPR), not in Johnston's social networks.

The other two participants in the conversation, judging by the record, were journalist CPR Andrew Kenny And member House of Representatives of the state Colorado Javier Mabri. In the profiles of these two people, we also did not find any information about their participation in such an audio room. “Verified” sent Kenny and Marby a request for a comment, but at the time of the publication of this text there was no answer.

Update of January 23, 2024. Journalist Andrew Kenny, in response to a request “verified” about the commentary, said that he was not leading such an audio room: “This is a fake. There was no such event or press conference in which I participated. I never interviewed Mike Johnston. ”

Earlier authors of anti -Ukrainian fake videos repeatedly Applied neural networks, to Fake Voices of actors. FACECHERS from the project "VOKS Ukrainian" suggestedthat in the case of a rough replica of Johnston, attackers could use the site Elevenlabswho, with the help of artificial intelligence, transforms the text into speech. Our Ukrainian colleagues checked the viral video through the instrument AI Speech ClassifierAllowing to determine whether the audio road was created in ElevenLabs. The mayor’s voice analysis showed that the probability of this is 98%. “Verified” received the same result.

Screenshot

In addition to recording audio rooms, the screenshot of the TV channel will spread on social networks Denver 7whose logo is noticeable in the lower right corner of the frame. The news of Johnston was allegedly filed with a note by Breaking (“Lightning”), and the text read: “Mayor Mike Johnston:“ Yo ... Near Ukrainian animal ”. The mayor of Denver made an insulting remark during an online conference in X. "

"Verified" did not find such news on either sitenor in the social networks Denver 7 (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube And X). We also watched many plots of the TV channel to compare the viral image font with the fact that the media actually uses this, since the authors of fakes almost always fake this design element with errors. It turned out that some letters (most noticeable by A, R and G) differ in the spread screenshot, and the quote is also incorrectly designed (the channel puts them in quotation marks).

FACECHERS from "VOKS Ukrainian "" And Stopfake Sented requests to the Denver 7 editorial office with a request to confirm or refute the publication of such news. Executive producer of Dijital projects of the television channel Stefani Butzer I confirmed that the distributed picture is a fake: “This is a fake. If you carefully look at the lower third (red strip from below), you can see how words are not focused on someone from our news edition. ”

Thus, on the network there is no reliable evidence that the mayor of Denver called someone a roar Ukrainian animal for the cry of “Glory to Ukraine!”. The viral recording with a high degree of probability was created using neural networks, and the distributed screenshot of the broadcast of the American television channel was falsified by unknown in the photo editor. In addition, the earliest of the famous “verified” the appearance of these materials took place on January 10 at 13:55 Moscow time in the Telegram channel "Sheikh Tamir"(136,000 views). Previously this channel dozens of times Published Fakes became their original source.

Photo on the cover: social networks

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

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