A video allegedly shot in New York spread on the network, where on one of the advertising screens in the very center of the city it was as if the inscription “Crimea is Russia! 10 years together! ” We checked the authenticity of this video.
The video began to spread in Telegram channels on March 18, 2024, on the tenth anniversary signing agreements on the "adoption in Russia" of Crimea and Sevastopol. In one day, the video shared more than 200 Russian-speaking Telegram channels, in total, gaining more than 3 million views. The official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation wrote about the festive video allegedly shown on Times Square Maria Zakharova (143,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Sanya in Florida"(491 000),"Uncle Glory"(188 000), Voblya (177 000), "Sheikh Tamir"(142 000) and others. In addition to Telegram, the record was distributed in"VKontakte","Yandes.zen" YouTube, Instagram, X And "Classmates". News appeared in some Russian Media.
The viral video is really captured by New York. By using Google Street View “Verified” managed to install Point of shooting: This is the intersection of the 7th Avenue and the 45th Western Street. There, at high -rise building Renaissance Hotel at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and the 47th Western Street-in one of the the most lively Places of Manhattan, right in front of Times Square, and there is an advertising screen.
Advertising with Russian tricolor and slogan "Crimea is Russia!" In the middle of New York, the attention of citizens and tourists was supposed to attract the attention of the TELEGRAM-the only evidence of its demonstration, which “verified” could find in the open access. Local media did not talk about the video, and Google, when searching in English, gives out only two unique result: tweet of Ukrainian Center for Combating Disinformationwho calls the video “Another Fack”, and the post of pro-Russian Telegram channel ”IL RUSSO".
On Instagram you can find a lot of photos and videos shot on Times Square March 18, and also The day before And The next day. Judging by these records, on the screen of interest to us at that time, Coca-Cola advertising was broadcast, and not a video of the annexation of Crimea. On March 16, one of the users of Instagram published fast With a selection of pictures of this place in recent years, it follows that popular soda has been advertised on this screen since 2013. Moreover, this advertising platform directly belongs to Coca-Cola. In 2017, the brand published video On the launch of an updated screen with thousands of moving LED panels that move in accordance with the displayed animation.
It is unlikely that Coca-Cola would voluntarily provide its screen for the congratulatory video about the “reunification” of Crimea with Russia, because once the company was already in the scandal due to the issue of belonging to the peninsula. On the eve of the new, 2016 Coca-Cola Published On its VKontakte page, a map on which Crimea was included in the Russian Federation. About the incident Wrote the world's largest media, and Ukrainian users of social networks Called Boycotting the company's products. On the same day, representatives of the corporation apologized, explaining that the design of the card completed a third-party agency without the knowledge of Coca-Cola leadership.
Another detail that doubts the authenticity of the video published in Telegram: if you look at the advertising screen (for example, on Google Maps or video In YouTube), in its upper part it is easy to see the voluminous logo "Coca-Cola". It is also visible in photographs of Instagram users, laid out And before and after March 18, but on the viral video There is no logo. Even if we assume that for some reason Coca-Cola still decided to show the video about the Crimea on its screen, it is unlikely that the company would dismantle the logo during the show, and then re-install it.
"Verified" analyzed the stop cadres from the video on error level (ELA) using the Forensically service (more about this method of checking images for authenticity, you can read Here). Although the ELA application has its own restrictions, its results show that, most likely, animation with the Crimea card was imposed on the original video using digital manipulations. A similar approach to the creation of misinformation content was used in pro-Kremlin Telegram channels earlier, including in rollers allegedly shot on the streets New York And others megacities.
The earliest “tested” publication containing a viral video appeared on March 18, 2024 at 10:41 Moscow time in the Telegram channel "Cat Kostyan"(102,000 views). In the east of the United States at that time it was 03:41 in the morning, although in videoJudging by the signatures in social networks, the late evening of March 18 is allegedly captured, when "New York congratulated Crimea on a decade of return to his native harbor."
Thus, the video dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea was not shown that day on a huge screen on Times Square. Apparently, a congratulatory animation was inserted into the video shot in advance by applying it on top of Coca-Cola advertising.
Photo on the cover: Wikimedia Commons
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