Is it true that a French street artist depicted Zelensky in Paris as a whining child?

At the end of February 2024, social networks reported that the famous street art author Blek le Rat painted the President of Ukraine in the form of a capricious baby shouting: “Give me money!” We have verified the accuracy of this story.

Xavier Proulx, known under the pseudonym Blec le Rat, is a popular French artist who called the father of stencil graffiti. In February 2024 in RuNet appeared numerous publications that in one of the buildings in Paris, Proulx presented Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as a “whining child in a supermarket”, who seemed to be lying on the floor, banging his hands and constantly asking to give him money. “Give me money! Money! Give it! Give it!” - read the inscriptions behind baby Zelensky. A couple of photographs of the drawing are provided as evidence. Some posts specify that street art located in front of the US Embassy and that this cartoon quickly replicated local publics.

Similar posts were posted by Telegram channels “Putin on Telegram"(165,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Scott Ritter on Telegram"(87,000), "Russia 2.0" (52,000), "Uncle Slava on Telegram" (48,000), "Patriot Z" (38,000), "Ves.rf" (32,000), "Sunshine"(28,000), "Nikita Mikhalkov on Telegram"(25,000), "Analytics Abzalova"(21,000), "Denazification UA"(19,000), etc., as well as communities on VKontakte (examples here, here, here, here And here) and some news sites.

To begin with, “Verified” tried to determine the original source of the news about Blek le Rat’s graffiti with Zelensky. We were unable to find information about this street art in French communities on social networks, and the earliest publication among those that we tracked was in Russian-language Telegram channels "Shkvarka News"(3000 views) and "Shkvarka 2.0"(1000). Posts there appeared on February 20, 2024 at 13:24 Moscow time. An hour and a half later, a similar entry was published in the channel “V Hand of the Kremlin Z"(7400 views). In all three publications it is noted that the news was sent by some anonymous subscribers - this is a popular model for spreading fakes, which these channels have used more than once enjoyed.

All the posts we found contain one or two images that are not independent photographs, but screenshots. So, the first picture shows material on the radio channel’s website France Inter, included in Radio France, and on the second - stories from Instagram* France Inter. These resources allegedly wrote about graffiti with Zelensky and showed it from two angles. It is no longer possible to check the presence of stories (more than 24 hours have passed, and this publication is not in the album with highlights), but we can certainly say that the article about the caricature of Zelensky from Blek le Rat on the radio website absent. Creating fake media screenshots and stories - another favorite method of fake authors.

We also studied the official website artist and his verified Instagram profile, where there is also no mention of graffiti with Zelensky in the form of a child. Our colleagues from the Italian fact-checking project Open contacted Blek le Ras, who denied that he created such a drawing. “It’s not me,” he replied in a dry message that left little room for interpretation.

In addition, Open journalists noticedthat the area around the US Embassy in France, which located in the center of Paris, is completely different from the area depicted in the viral photos, that is, the pictures of the graffiti were taken in a different place. “Verified,” in turn, remembered that earlier the creators of fake anti-Ukrainian street art (often Zelensky was depicted on them) had repeatedly indicated incorrect locations to make verification difficult. Thus, many photographs of roads and walls, on which drawings were then digitally superimposed, were taken in the eastern suburbs of Paris. At the same time, in one photo with baby Zelensky, there is a noticeable sign where you can only make out ar cocktails. We assumed that the first word was bar and thus found the required place. The photographs, as expected, were taken not in the center of the French capital, but in the commune of Montreuil, east of Paris along address st. Armand Carrel, 55. Moreover, the building on which graffiti was allegedly painted with Zelensky in the form of a child, located just a few minutes walk from six previous places where fake street art was located.

Having found out the address, we asked French fact-checker Alex Capron from the Les Observateurs project of the France 24 television channel to go to the desired building and check for graffiti. In response, he sent us a photo of the wall taken by his friend on March 5th. The photograph shows neither the drawing itself nor any traces of its removal.

Thus, it is safe to say that Blek le Rat never drew a caricature of Zelensky in front of the US Embassy in Paris - this drawing was created by unknown people in a photo editor, and then superimposed on an authentic photograph taken in the suburbs of the French capital.

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: social networks

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

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