In February 2025, a video that a Hollywood actor allegedly published on social networks went viral on social networks. It is alleged that the recording shows a game in which gamers are asked to beat up the President of Ukraine. We have verified the authenticity of this story.
The first reports of the proposed publication appeared on the RuNet on February 18. “Sylvester Stallone posted a video of himself playing a game where you have to beat up [Vladimir] Zelensky. "Rocky's retired. But even in retirement, he's still in business." Previously Trump appointed Stallone (as well as Mel Gibson and Jon Voight. - Ed.) as his ambassador to Hollywood,” said the Telegram channel post “Ne.Sugar"(228,000 views at the time of writing this analysis).
According to the TGStat service, at the time of writing this analysis, more than 340 similar Russian-language posts had appeared on Telegram, which in total received almost 2 million views. Similar posts were published by the channels “Uncle Slava"(179,000 views), "Solovyov"(126,000), Rus_criminal (104,000), "Kot Kostyan - official channel"(102,000), "First People's" (93,000), "Falcon"(80,000), etc. The same video can be found on VKontakte (examples here, here And here), "Odnoklassniki" (here And here), X, Threads*, TikTok, as well as on YouTube and other platforms. Among the media and news sites they wrote about this “Constantinople", "Gazeta.ru", "Belarus today" And NewsLand.
The viral 25-second video is a recording of the screen of a smartphone, which allegedly shows stories on a verified account. page Stallone on Instagram*. The publication allegedly contains an excerpt from a certain first-person video game in which a gamer wearing boxing gloves can beat up a man who resembles Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The location repeats situation his office. In addition, in the video it sounds melody from a series of films about boxer Rocky Balboa, whose role was played by Stallone for decades, and the English-language inscription is given: “Rocky is retired. But even though he’s retired, he’s still in business.” Also in the alleged story there was allegedly a link to Steam — a platform where you can buy and/or download computer games.
To begin with, “Verified” tried to track down the original source of the viral video. The earliest publication with this video that we could find was came out February 18, 2025 at 13:14 Moscow time in the above-mentioned Telegram channel “Ne.Sugar”. Two minutes later, the same post appeared in the channel “Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation"(6900 views). Both these resource already were mentioned in dozens of reviews “Verified” - often as the primary source of the spread of fakes, including fake Instagram stories.
There is a timestamp at the top of the viral video indicating that the screen recording was taken approximately 18 hours after the alleged story was posted. For the first time, “Verified” drew attention to posts about this video, allegedly posted by Stallone, on February 18 at 15:23, that is, a little over two hours after the posts in the channels “Ne.Sugar” and “Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation." However, at that time there were no stories on the artist’s Instagram page, although such publications are by default available within 24 hours.
It can be assumed that the viral video hit the Internet after the actor’s story was hidden or deleted. However, "Verified" found that the same screen recording is being circulated on social networks, although Stallone's Instagram signed almost 19 million users. It seems strange that in at least 18 hours, only one subscriber managed to fix the artist’s post. There is no mention of this resonant story either in any major English-language media or on thematic fan pages dedicated to Stallone’s work and his activity on social networks. In addition, we did not find a link to the original publication in any post, so it is impossible to check the availability of archived copies.
Also note that when we checked the actor's page, he was subscribed to 73 users. The viral video shows a different number of subscriptions: 70.
As for the game itself, which supposedly can be purchased on Steam, we couldn't find it in the online service catalog using keywords. Most posts do not indicate either the developer studio or the English name of the project. Edition "Belarus today” claims that it is called “Beat Zelensky”, and the site NewsLand - “Beat Zelensky.” But there are no mentions of games with such names anywhere else either.
Thus, there is no convincing evidence that Stallone posted a video about a game where you have to beat up Zelensky. This story is based on a single story post that the actor allegedly posted on Instagram. But the video initially appeared on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, which had previously been repeatedly caught distributing fabricated photos and videos.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Instagram and Threads, an extremist organization, its activities and symbols are prohibited on the territory of Russia.
Cover photo: social networks
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