In January 2024, reports spread on Telegram that a drink named after the President of Ukraine had allegedly appeared in the Scandinavian country. We checked whether such a product exists in reality.
As stated in publications, a certain Swedish company, which previously produced energy drinks with the names “Sweat from the scrotum” and “Juice from ass berries,” has launched the production of a new flavor - “Zelensky’s Tears.” Usually such posts are accompanied by a photograph of tin cans with rather provocative inscriptions.
This news spread most strongly on Telegram - in particular, the channels “Aggregator"(395,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Ne.Sugar» (262,000), Voblya (149,000), Z-News (120,000) and Rus_criminal (109,000).
Disclaimer: Some of the photographs used in this text show drawings of genitals. If this is unacceptable to you, please do not read the analysis.
“Verified” found no trace of the existence of a product called Zelensky’s Tears in Swedish online stores and other local sites. Judging by the search results, the news about the appearance of a new energy drink in this Scandinavian country is spread almost exclusively by Russian and pro-Russian resources.
A reverse search for a viral image in Google Image Search brings different results. In the search results you can see many publications, including foreign ones, published at the end of 2023, but they all have one thing in common: although this is the same photograph, there is no can of Zelensky’s Tears drink on it. On the third can from the left in the bottom row, instead of the face of the Ukrainian president and the corresponding signature, you can see the inscription “Fuck you you fuckin’ fuck.”
Additionally, some details (the image of a penis and sperm-filled condoms) on other jars were removed in the edited version.
The drinks from the original photo are produced by a Swedish company Ovrhypd. Thanks to provocative titles (“Scrotum Sweat,” “Santa Cums,” “Camel toe"etc.) its products are relatively known far beyond Sweden.
According to the TGStat service, the first edited photo was posted on January 16 at 12:28 Moscow time by the Telegram channel “Prometheus"(3800 views). Previously he had already distributed false information about lubricants with the faces of celebrities declared to be foreign agents in Russia.
In the first months after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was talk on social networks video about vodka under the brand “Tears of Zelensky”, allegedly found in one of the Moscow supermarkets. The existence of this drink has also not been confirmed.
Cover photo: screenshot from social networks
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