At the beginning of July 2024, Telegram channels disseminated a quote from a publicist living in the United States that, with the exception of buckwheat, salt and water, only dummies are displayed in Russian stores. We checked whether Piontkovsky made such a statement.

The full quote, the author of which Telegram channels call Andrei Piontkovsky, reads like this: “We can’t even imagine the scale of the catastrophe, the social catastrophe that happened in Russia. In stores there are only dummies on the shelves. There is buckwheat, salt, water, the rest is dummies. And they don’t notice, because they don’t even look at anything other than the cheapest. There are also people, employees, they walk back and forth with a full cart, this is for appearances. The whole country is like a Potemkin village, and you’re asking about rockets! This is what we need to talk about, we need to shout about it.” It is clarified that the publicist made this statement during a joint broadcast with lawyer and blogger Mark Feigin.

This statement was cited in their posts by the channels “Ukraine.ru"(96,000 views), "The professor looks at the world" (61,000), "Threads of Empire"(49,000), "Russian format" (35,000), "Nina Vatt 🇷🇺“(31,000), etc. Often the quote was accompanied by sarcastic comments like “I’ll go buy a dummy steak and chew it,” “And you say that Biden is out of his mind,” or “Yes, yes, it’s all true - there is no food, no dentists, no addiction specialists, no psychiatrists.” Similar publications appeared in Facebook, X, "Zene"and other social networks and blog platforms.

A quote about dummies on the shelves of Russian stores began to spread throughout the Russian-language segment of the Internet on July 3. Most Telegram channels that talked about Piontkovsky’s alleged statement have a screenshot of the broadcast on the Feigin Live YouTube channel, took place July 2. However, during the conversation, both speakers did not touch upon the topic of the Russian economy in any detail - they spoke mainly about the war in Ukraine and recent events in international politics.

“Verified” was also unable to find earlier publications or videos where Piontkovsky spoke about dummies on the shelves of Russian stores, either in joint broadcasts with Feigin or on other resources.

According to TGStat, for the first time this quote appeared July 3 at 12:08 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “but my Yandex wallet.” The description of this channel reads: “Parody, satire on political reality. Only verified fakes.”

This is not the first time that satirical news authored by “but my Yandex wallet” has been distributed under the guise of the real thing. So, in mid-June Telegram channels quoted a statement allegedly made by German Foreign Minister Annalena Bärbock that the Ukrainian military had turned the swastika into a symbol of freedom. The primary source of that news also turned out to be “but my Yandex wallet.”

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

Cover photo: social networks