Did the White House press secretary say that the United States and Ukraine won World War II by fighting together against Hitler and Stalin?

On May 9, 2024, a video circulated on the Internet in which Karine Jean-Pierre states: During the war, the United States and Ukraine fought together against Nazi Germany and the USSR. We checked to see if she really said that.

On May 9, 2024, an excerpt from a White House briefing allegedly dedicated to the 79th anniversary of the end of World War II appeared in the Russian media and social networks. When asked by a journalist why Washington does not condemn manifestations of Nazism in Ukraine, US Presidential Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre allegedly replied: “79 years ago, the United States and Ukrainian allies fought together against the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin.”

Many Russian media were indignant such an interpretation of the past. For example, "Moskovsky Komsomolets” published an article with the subtitle “White House: World War II was won by the USA and Ukraine, which fought against Stalin.” IN Telegram Posts with a quote from Jean-Pierre received, according to TGStat, at the time of writing this analysis, more than 2 million views. Among others, a member of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation wrote about the statement allegedly made in the White House Alexey Pushkov and publicist Alexander Nevzorov. Users Facebook, "VKontakte", X And Instagram also posted on their pages a video allegedly filmed during a briefing by the US presidential administration. In the English-speaking segment of the Internet this video is also attracted noticeable attention.

Jean-Pierre's alleged statement was also commented on by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova. “God forgive me, these people pose a threat, primarily to US citizens, with their distorted consciousness and desire to destroy the consciousness of others. Biden’s monsters insulted the memory of millions of victims of World War II,” quotes Speaker of the Russian Foreign Ministry "Rossiyskaya Gazeta".

The viral video shows a dialogue between The Independent newspaper journalist Andrew Feinberg and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. To the question “Why don’t we condemn the manifestations of Ukrainian Nazism and continue to pay for it from our own pockets?” a representative of the American presidential administration answers: “79 years ago, the United States and our Ukrainian allies fought together against the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin. Although Berlin is now our ally, the threat from the east remains. Therefore, we will continue to support Ukraine with all means available to us.” The video is distributed in two versions: full (28 seconds) and shortened (17 seconds), in which only Jean-Pierre’s answer is left. Both versions are provided with Russian subtitles.

Some Russian media claim, that this dialogue took place at a briefing dedicated to the anniversary of the end of World War II. Note that she ended the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945, and on May 9 in Russia and some other countries they celebrate Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War, because it was May 9, 1945 at 00:43 Moscow time (or May 8 at 22:43 Central European time) signed act of surrender of Germany.

Transcripts of all White House briefings can be found on the official website President of the United States, and videos are available on the platform C-SPAN and in YouTube. We were unable to find information on any of these resources about Jean-Pierre’s meeting with journalists dedicated to the end of World War II in Europe.

Judging by the clothing of the press secretary and journalists, the viral footage was taken from the broadcast briefing, held on May 7, 2024. This was a regular meeting between Jean-Pierre and representatives of the media, not associated with any memorable dates. "Verified" studied transcript And video recording that briefing: during the event, neither Stalin, nor Hitler, nor the Second World War was mentioned once.

The viral video was stitched together from different fragments of the broadcast and, apparently, edited using neural networks. The first part of the fake was based on the moment (18:30), in which Feinberg asks about US actions in light of the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. The second basis for the video that went viral on social networks was a fragment started broadcast five and a half minutes later, another journalist asked Jean-Pierre to comment on the desire of Romanian President Klaus Iohannis (he was arrived to Washington) to lead NATO. To this, the White House press secretary responds in the original broadcast: “The President [Biden] looked forward to hosting President Iohannis to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Romania becoming [our] strong and steadfast NATO ally, and looked forward to celebrating Iohannis' leadership in NATO and the great contributions that Romania has made to NATO security, especially in the Black Sea region, and obviously their great support for Ukraine against Russian aggression." A fake audio track, likely generated by artificial intelligence, was superimposed on top of these two fragments glued together.

The creators of the fake not only superimposed a different audio track on the video, assembled from two different fragments of the broadcast, but also, using neural networks, changed the movement of the lips of Fainberg and Jean-Pierre so that it coincided with the question about Nazism in Ukraine and the answer about the fight against Stalin and Hitler. It can be seen that the gestures and general facial expressions of the journalist and press secretary in the original and fake videos are the same, but the lips move differently. To carry out such manipulations with videos, there are many programs and online services (for example, Gooey.ai or Sync.ai).

The earliest deepfake publication we found appeared in the Telegram channel “Sheikh Tamir» May 8 at 15:50 Moscow time. By the way, on the same day at 21:29 “Tsargrad” published article about Jean-Pierre’s alleged statement, which began with the words: “Deepfake is actively spreading across the Internet.” At the same time, the TV channel did not mention that it itself took part in its distribution, having published an hour earlier article with the headline “Americans and Ukrainians fought against Hitler and Stalin: history was rewritten in the White House.” At the time of writing this analysis, both publications were available on the Tsargrad website without any clarifications or amendments.

Thus, Jean-Pierre did not say that World War II was won by the United States and Ukraine, who fought together against the regimes of Hitler and Stalin. The video cited as evidence is a splicing of two fragments of a press conference that took place at the White House on May 7, 2024, at which the topic of World War II was not raised at all. The fake audio track with Jean-Pierre's voice was created using artificial intelligence, and the video was altered using a neural network.

Cover photo: White House Press Office

Fake

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