In October 2024, a quote attributed to a Russian comedian and musician circulated in the media and social networks: he allegedly complained about his Ukrainian neighbors who prevented him from getting to his shelter during a recent attack on Israel. We have verified the authenticity of this statement.
October 8 in the Telegram channel “Observer"(200,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) a post appeared that Ukrainians living in Israel did not allow Semyon Slepakov* into the bomb shelter during an Iranian missile attack on the evening of October 1. The authors of the publication accompanied their message with the following quote from the comedian: “I have no words right now. There is one shelter right next to the house, so naturally I went there. There, at the entrance, the Ukrainian guys directly said that “Russians are not allowed here.” I had to run two blocks. Fine? I can't wrap my head around it. How so, guys? I thought we were on the same side."
According to the TGStat service, at the time of publication of this analysis, at least 230 similar posts appeared on Telegram, which in total received more than 1.8 million views. Among the most popular are channel recordings “What happened?"(144,000 views), "Sheikh Tamir"(134,000), "Alexander Semchenko"(94,000), "Club service" (71,000) and "Notepad Russia 18+"(53,000). Popular posts with an alleged quote from Slepakov can be found in “VKontakte"(examples here, here And here), X And Instagram**. The publication also wrote about this story on its website.Ukraine.ru", and in his blog on the Zen platform - the TV channel "Constantinople"
The massive missile attack on Israel by Iran, which is mentioned in the publications mentioned above, was inflicted October 1, 2024. By estimates Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Tehran fired about 180 projectiles that day, many of which the Israeli military said were intercepted.
Slepakov emigrated to Israel in the spring of 2022. Since the Hamas attack on the country in October 2023, Russian pro-government media have regularly publish materials, directed against the artists who went there. At the beginning of October 2024, such publications and Telegram channels distributed disinformation that Maxim Galkin, Andrei Makarevich, Mikhail Shats and other Russian celebrities left Israel amid the Iranian attack.
In many publications about the alleged quote from Slepakov approvedthat he himself told how the Ukrainians did not let him into the shelter. Despite this, there are no links to interviews or posts on the artist’s social networks where similar words would be presented. “Verified” also studied Slepakov’s pages and found no similar video messages or posts. We contacted the musician for comment, but at the time of publication of this analysis we had not received a response.
Using a keyword search, “Verified” found that the earliest post with a viral quote was published on October 2, 2024 at 09:01 Moscow time in the Telegram channel “and here is my Yandex wallet"(21,000 views). The description of this channel reads: “Parody, satire on political reality. Only verified fakes.” “Here’s my Yandex wallet” more than 20 times already mentioned in “Verified” analyses, his inventions, including those about celebrities, are often passed off as real news.
Thus, Semyon Slepakov did not complain that during the Iranian attack on Israel, the Ukrainians did not allow him into the shelter. Russian media and owners of large Telegram channels once again disseminated satirical news under the guise of real news.
Cover photo: social networks / @slepakovsemyon (Instagram)
- Is it true that the singer Monetochka gave the Russians an ultimatum: “Either me or Putin”?
- Did singer Charlotte complain that after burning his Russian passport he could not leave Yerevan airport?
- Is it true that Elena Zelenskaya received Israeli citizenship?
- Is it true that a Romanian TV channel showed a staged report from Israel?
- Is it true that an advertisement was shown in New York calling for support for Israel instead of Ukraine?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
