At the end of November 2024, reports began to spread on the Internet that unknown residents of the Ukrainian capital allegedly painted graffiti with an image of a target and the words “Putin, here!” to the square in front of the Parliament building. We have verified the accuracy of this information.
The news about this target began to actively spread in the Russian media and Telegram channels on November 29. It was reported, that the drawing was made by the people of Kiev, tired of the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky and the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada and therefore supporting the Russian troops. Telegram channel “Z-News | Army" (82,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) commented the news is like this: “The surviving Ukrainians themselves dream of getting rid of the expired drug fuhrer and company.” Many posts were accompanied by a video showing the Rada building and graffiti with a target and an inscription. According to the statement "Moskovsky Komsomolets", this video, filmed by an eyewitness in Kyiv, first appeared on the Telegram channel "Tsargrad-TV"(78,000 views). Similar posts were published by the channels “Sheikh Tamir"(206,000), "Russia now"(198,000), "Open Ukraine"(60,000), etc.
November 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin at a press conference in Astana stated: The Russian military command is selecting targets in Ukraine to strike them with the new Oreshnik hypersonic missile system. Among them, Putin clarified, there may be Ukrainian defense enterprises and decision-making centers in Kyiv, but the politician did not name any specific objects.
The next day, a video appeared on RuNet with a target allegedly drawn near the building of the Ukrainian parliament, and the inscription “Putin, here!” The eyewitness seems to be taking a 360-degree panorama and is not focusing on the graffiti itself, but at the bottom of the screen almost the entire drawing is included in the frame. “Kyiv, Verkhovna Rada. This is such bullshit right in front of the building,” the voice-over says in Ukrainian, although the author of the video does not point the camera at the graffiti that draws the audience’s attention to.
There are other details that raise suspicions. Firstly, a detailed study of the video shows that the inscription “Putin, here!” looks too smooth and neat. The image is completely free of any distortion, which inevitably occurs when graffiti is applied to paving stones. The inscription looks like it was typed on a computer and is very different in style from the target itself, which looks like it was painted with a can of spray paint. In addition, in some places the image of the paving stones is blurry, and the target supposedly painted on it is unnaturally clear. These depth of field inconsistencies indicate that the target was very likely added in a video editor.
Secondly, back on August 23, 2024, the columns of the Rada building were covered yellow-blue canvases in honor of the National Flag Day of Ukraine. And, judging by the photographs taken by the Ukrainian fact-checking project StopFake On December 5 (a week after the viral video appeared), the appearance of the building remained the same at the beginning of winter. However, in the viral video, the columns are the same color as the rest of the facade and do not have any decorations on them.
Thirdly, as noted in StopFake, at the end of the video, the Mariinsky Park located next to the parliament building and the monument to Soviet General Nikolai Vatutin were captured in the frame. This monument was dismantled by the Ukrainian authorities back in February 2023. How reminded local media, in 2014 Ukrainian Institute of National Memory turned on Vatutin to the list of persons involved in the struggle against the independence of Ukraine, the Holodomor and political repression. If the viral video had actually been filmed in November 2024, only the pedestal remaining from the monument would have been visible in the frame (the sculpture itself was moved to the Aviation Museum).
The earliest post with a fake video that “Verified” could find was published in the Telegram channel Nina Vatt November 29 at 17:51 Moscow time. Half an hour later, an almost identical post appeared in the more popular pro-Russian channel “Sheikh Tamir" The Nina Vatt channel has repeatedly acted as a primary source of misinformation; previously “Verified” had already refuted the fakes it spread, mainly about Ukraine And USA.
This is not the first time that such videos have been circulated on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. The creators of these fakes either use videos filmed in public places and published on social networks, or turn to local sympathizers for help, and then add misleading elements in a video editor: graffiti, inscriptions, posters, etc. Such manipulations are often aimed at the first impression - in the hope that viewers will not analyze the content of the video in detail. Yes, “Verified” already sorted it out video of a board outside a restaurant in the center of Kyiv that allegedly sold kebab with “Karabakh smoke” and shots “For Pashinyan” shortly after Azerbaijan took control of Nagorno-Karabakh in the fall of 2023. Another example — a photograph of the “We do not serve Ukrainians for free” stand at one of the Berlin cafes, which spread across pro-Kremlin resources in the summer of 2024, but its basis, as it turned out, was a photograph taken almost a year earlier.
Thus, the news about graffiti in the shape of a target with the inscription “Putin, here!” that appeared near the building of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is fake. Upon closer inspection, it is noticeable that the drawing looks unnatural, and the video shows a monument that was dismantled back in 2023. All these inconsistencies confirm that the video, filmed at least several months ago, was edited, apparently for the purpose of misinformation.
Cover photo: Telegram
Read on topic:
- BBC. What is known about the new Oreshnik missile that Russia launched along the Dnieper?
- StopFake. Photo fake: Street art “Zelensky out!” appeared in Kyiv
- Is it true that an advertisement appeared in Kyiv with the inscription “You cannot choose the president, but you can choose beer”?
- Is it true that the Ukrainian Armed Forces used a slogan based on a Putin quote in their advertising?
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