In early July 2024, Telegram channels distributed a quote from a publicist living in the United States that, with the exception of buckwheat, salt and water in Russian stores, mules were exhibited exclusively. We checked whether Piontkovsky spoke with such a statement.

A completely quote, the author of which TEELGRAM channels call Andrei Piontkovsky, sounds like this: “We do not even represent the scale of that disaster, a social catastrophe that happened in Russia. In stores on the shelves there are only dummies. There is buckwheat, salt, water, the rest - frets. And after all, they do not notice, because they do not even look at another other than the cheapest. There are still people, employees, they go back and forth with a full cart, this is for visibility. The whole country is like a Potemkin village, and you ask about rockets! Here you need to talk about this, you need to scream. ” It is clarified that the publicist made this statement during a joint broadcast with a lawyer and blogger Mark Feigin.

This statement brought channels in their posts "Ukraine.ru"(96,000 views),"Professor looks at the world"(61 000),"The threads of the empire"(49,000),"Russian format"(35,000),"Nina Vatt 🇷🇺"(31,000) and others. Often, the quote was accompanied by sarcastic comments like" I’ll go buy a man of steak, I have to eat "," And you say that Bayden survived from the mind "or" Yes, everything is true-there is no food, nor dentists, nor narcologists, nor psychiatrists. " Similar publications appeared in Facebook, X, "Zen"Both other social networks and on the blog platforms.

A quote about dummies on the shelves of Russian stores began to distribute on the Russian -speaking segment of the Internet on July 3. Most Telegram channels who spoke about Piontkovsky’s alleged statement have a screenshot of the broadcast on the Feigin Live YouTube channel, consisted July 2. However, during the conversation, both speakers did not concern the topic of the Russian economy in detail-they spoke mainly about the war in Ukraine and recent events in international politics.

“Verified” also failed to find earlier publications or videos where Piontkovsky spoke about dummies on the shelves of Russian stores - both on joint air with Feigin and other resources.

According to TGSTAT, this quote for the first time appeared July 3 at 12:08 pm Moscow time in the Telegram channel "But my Yandex wallet." The description of this channel reads: “A parody, a satire on political reality. Only proven fakes. "

The satirical news behind the authorship of “But my Yandex Kid” is far from the first to spread under the guise of real ones. So, in mid-June, telegram channels Quoted An application, allegedly made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany Annalena Berbok, that the Ukrainian military turned the swastika into a symbol of freedom. The source of that news was also "but my Yandex wallet."

Thus, the quote attributed to Piontkovsky about fouts on the shelves of Russian stores was invented by a blogger who publishes comic news. However, other Telegram channels distributed it already under the guise of a real one.

Photo on the cover: social networks