At the end of May 2024, a video circulated on Telegram channels in which Belgian parliamentarians allegedly greeted the appearance of the Ukrainian president with laughter. We decided to check whether this actually happened.
The 14-second video is framed as a fragment of the broadcast of the France 24 TV channel. At the beginning, Vladimir Zelensky is shown, accompanied by the Prime Minister of Belgium Alexandre de Cros, then there are laughing men sitting in the hall, and at the end there is a presenter in the studio who talks about the meeting of the two leaders. Posts on a number of Telegram channels claim that the second part of the video depicts Belgian deputies who reacted this way to Zelensky’s requests to provide military assistance to Ukraine. This was reported, in particular, by the channels Voblya (145,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), “Sheikh Tamir" (140,000) and "Kot Kostyan - official channel"(86,000).
The meeting between Zelensky and de Cros took place on May 28 in Brussels. At it, the President of Ukraine and the Prime Minister of Belgium signed a bilateral agreement on security cooperation, in which, in particular, the volumes of future military assistance to Kyiv were recorded. Yes, Belgium pledged by 2028, transfer 30 F-16 fighters to Ukraine, as well as other military equipment and equipment. After the meeting of the two leaders, a press conference was held.
In the lower right corner of the video is the logo of the French TV channel France 24, which also operates in English. The TV channel regularly publishes short videos and excerpts from its broadcasts on YouTube, however, the press conference of Zelensky and de Cros he didn't broadcast. There are no notes about this event among the English-language news on website France 24.
The video can be divided into three fragments: Zelensky and de Cros leaving a certain hall, laughing men and a presenter in the studio.
The first fragment is actually the last seconds of the broadcast of a press conference held on May 28 in Brussels. In particular, the event on YouTube broadcast Reuters agency.
The broadcast ends there. But the viral video goes on to show men in suits laughing: neither in the Reuters video nor in the live footage from Facebook there are no President of Ukraine. The origin of this fragment of the viral video “Verified” could not be determined.
Since the quality of the video is low, it is difficult to clearly determine who is depicted in it. However, analyzing screenshots using PimEyes and other facial recognition tools show that, most likely, the three laughing men are not MPs or even Belgians.
Presumably the person on the left is a media manager Gerard Timmer, until March 2024 he headed the Dutch public broadcaster NOS. The man with long hair sitting behind him is Timmer's predecessor in this post. Jan de Jong, who, after leaving media, managed the Feyenoord football club and then the entire Eredivisie, the top league of the Dutch championship. Hands folded in the center of the frame Lennart van der Meulen - Another Dutch media manager, until 2023 he headed the local public broadcaster VPRO.
The third part of the video is actually a fragment of the France 24 broadcast. In the frame is the TV channel presenter Gavin Lee talks about the meeting between Zelensky and de Cros. However, the full version video dates back to May 2023, and it was about a joint press conference of three politicians: in addition to Zelensky and de Cros, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte answered journalists’ questions after negotiations in The Hague. Lee directly mentions him in the viral video (but the creators of the edited video, apparently, were not bothered by this).
In the viral video, the caption was replaced: instead of “Zelensky in The Hague,” the inscription “Zelensky in Brussels” appeared on it. At the same time, the authors of the viral video failed to achieve complete similarity: the font is slightly different, as can be seen in the example of the letter R.
The earliest post with this video, which “Verified” was able to find using the TGStat service, is an entry in the Telegram channel “Kryminforum 🇿 🇴 🇻", published on May 28 at 16:04 Moscow time. Fake videos with logos of world media, including and France 24, more than once appeared in the “Verified” analysis.
Thus, the video with Belgian deputies allegedly laughing at Zelensky was compiled from several other videos, including a 2023 broadcast about the Ukrainian president’s trip to the Netherlands.
Cover photo: Office of the President of Ukraine
Read on topic:
- "Gvara Media". Fake. France 24: at the hour of the press conference in Brussels, Belgian MPs laughed at Zelensky
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- Is it true that the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry “did not recognize” Vladimir Zelensky on Twitter?
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