At the end of September 2024, a video of a man throwing a speaker from which the Russian anthem was playing went viral on social networks. The description states that this is a refugee in Kursk. We decided to check if this is true.

The 43-second video captures some kind of solemn event: the audience remains behind the scenes, but the presenter with a microphone is visible, standing near the monument. The Russian anthem plays from the speaker, but suddenly one of those present grabs her and throws her to the ground. The man is then led away by police while a choir of voices continues to sing the anthem a cappella. With the caption “In Kursk, refugees do not want to listen to the Russian anthem” (the author’s spelling has been preserved) this video published on the social network X, a blogger under the nickname Kokoshenkov, his tweet received more than 260,000 views. The video was also distributed Facebook users and some Telegram channels.

Viral video. Source: social networks

The video has a watermark from Lenta.ru, but recently no website, neither in social networks this Russian Media no such news came out. If you enter the keywords “column” and “Russian anthem” into the portal news search, you can actually find news with the headline “A Russian dropped a column broadcasting the anthem and became a defendant in a criminal case.” However, it was published on August 23, 2022, and the incident occurred not in Kursk at all, but in Podolsk near Moscow during the celebration of the Day of the State Flag of the Russian Federation the day before. The note on the Lenta.ru website is accompanied by the same video.

At the same time, in August 2022, other federal and regional Russian media wrote about this incident: “RIA Novosti", "Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Arguments and facts", "News of the Moscow region"etc. The fact that the hero of the video was a refugee from the Russian border regions, from Ukraine or another country is not mentioned in these notes.

The earliest publication of the video that “Verified” was able to find and which contains a caption about a refugee in Kursk is fast blogger with the nickname Kokoshenkov on the social network X, posted on September 23, 2024 at 09:20 Moscow time. The user's nickname refers to the name of the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense Igor Konashenkov, and the account description says: “I’m hanging noodles on the ears of stupid Russian people.” One might assume that the blogger specializes in satirical news, but “Verified” did not find any corresponding disclaimers, while the content of the profile is not humorous.

Thus, the video is being distributed with an incorrect caption: it has nothing to do with refugees or Kursk, and the incident itself occurred more than two years ago. Apparently, the video was first published with false comments by social network user X, who consistently promotes an anti-Russian position. It can be assumed that he deliberately provided the video with a fictitious description.

Cover photo: screenshot