In December 2024, a fragment of an American television channel circulated, which allegedly advertised the program “Great Thieves of the 21st Century” during the welcoming embrace of the presidents of Ukraine and France. We have verified the authenticity of this video.

WITH On December 8, an alleged fragment of a live broadcast by NBC channel went viral on the Internet. On it, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron hug when they meet, and an announcement of the Great Thieves of the 21st Century program appears in the lower right corner of the screen. Some sources claimed that unnamed NBC employees did this deliberately to emphasize the purpose of Zelensky's visit to Europe..

This video was shared by Telegram channels "KB"(230,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Evil proof️"(222,000), "Ukraine.ru"(145,000), "Voblya • news"(138,000), "Kot Kostyan - official channel" (118,000), etc., as well as "Russian newspaper", "Moskovsky Komsomolets", "Another Ukraine", "Without format" and Hungarian edition PS.tv.

Viral video. Source: Telegram

December 7 in Paris took place the opening ceremony of Notre Dame Cathedral, restored five years after a fire that destroyed the roof and spire of the temple. World leaders attended the ceremony, including US President-elect Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, US First Lady Jill Biden, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Britain's Prince William, Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili and many others. The high-ranking guests were met by French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte.

This event also attracted special attention thanks to first the face-to-face meeting between Zelensky and Trump after the re-election of the American politician, as well as their trilateral negotiations with Macron, which took place before the ceremony. According to sources from Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, the presidents of Ukraine and France discussed with the future owner of the White House security guarantees for Kyiv and ways control for compliance with a possible ceasefire.

In the lower right corner of the viral video you can see the logo of the American television channel NBC and the inscription “Reopening Ceremony of Notre Dame Cathedral.” On official website and the NBC YouTube channel has a broadcast of the celebration - the full version lasts almost three hours. It begins with the arrival of honored guests, who are met by Macron and his wife. After 38 minutes broadcasts A car with Zelensky drives up to the cathedral, and at around 38:42 begins excerpt from a viral video. However, in the original broadcast there is no advertising for the show “Great Thieves of the 21st Century”. The fragment with Zelensky’s participation lasts about two minutes, but during this time there is no such announcement, as in the entire broadcast as a whole.

Above is a screenshot from the viral video, below is a screenshot of the original video on NBC's YouTube channel

In a note from Hungarian PS.tv it saysthat "Great Thieves of the 21st Century" is the title of a new (but already popular) NBC series that follows the scammers and criminals who perpetrated the biggest scams of recent decades. But how on official website NBC and his accounts in social networks there is no information about the existence of such a show. Judging by the viral video, it was supposed to air on December 7 at 20:00 (in what time zone is unknown). The program schedule for that day is on the NBC website now unavailable, but in release evening news There is no such announcement on December 7, although schedule it ends at 7:00 p.m., an hour before Great Thieves is scheduled to air. There are no similar announcements in the program schedule on other days. “Verified” was unable to find evidence that the show “Great Thieves of the 21st Century” exists in principle.

One might assume that the TV channel deleted the video with the pop-up advertisement after the scandal. But, firstly, the broadcast on YouTube took place in real time, and now a saved recording of this broadcast has been published, which the authors could only slightly change: for example, cut out a segment or apply a blur effect to some frames. There are no such signs of editing visible in the NBC video. Secondly, the broadcast took place on December 7, and the viral video only began to spread the next day - it’s at least strange that no one paid attention to the alleged embarrassment with the advertising right away. Finally, there was simply no scandal that could have prompted NBC to edit the video - not a single reputable American media outlet wrote about such an oversight by the TV channel.

Adding misleading details to genuine videos using a video editor is a common method for creating fake news about Ukraine. For this, they can use it as a video with walks in different cities of the world, where add, For example, fake advertising on billboards and published a few years ago, fragments of English-language television shows.

The video was distributed mainly by Russian-language resources, but you can also find several English-language publications on the X social network. For example, the video published Irish publicist Chey Bowes, who cooperates with RT and often posts anti-Ukrainian posts. Earliest publication The video, which was discovered by “Verified,” appeared on the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel “Odessa for Victory!” December 8 at 12:39 Moscow time. This resource is already mentioned in analyzes “Verified” as a distributor of false information and even original source fake news.

Thus, NBC did not show an advertisement for its show about thieves during the broadcast of the opening ceremony of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris - neither at the time of Zelensky’s meeting with Macron, nor at any other time. The logo of a non-existent program was apparently added to the video using a video editor.

Cover photo: Office of the President of Ukraine