In August 2025, after negotiations between the presidents of the United States and Ukraine, a photograph was widely circulated on the Internet: in it, European politicians are waiting for an invitation to the office, sitting on chairs in the corridor of the White House. We have verified the authenticity of this image.
On August 18, a photo of politicians who came to Washington to meet with Donald Trump went viral on social networks. The heads of countries are sitting on chairs in the White House and seem to be waiting for an invitation to enter. Some users accompanied this photo with news about the negotiations taking place in the United States, while others ironically signed the image with the phrase “coalition of those waiting.”
Telegram channels posted a photo with similar captions “Russia now • news"(146,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Media Russia is not Moscow"(121,000), "Pool N3"(107,000), "Sheikh Tamir"(102,000), "Lera Kudryavtseva"(86,000), "Alexander Semchenko" (59,000), "Mardan"(58,000), "Notebook. Russia 18+"(56,000), etc.
August 18 in Washington passed negotiations between Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky. Together with the Ukrainian leader, several European politicians also came to the United States, in particular members of the “Coalitions of the willing"- French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, as well as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. This meeting was a continuation carried out On August 15, direct negotiations between the US President and Vladimir Putin in Anchorage.
American President first spent personal meeting with Vladimir Zelensky, after which they were joined by European leaders. Users who distributed the photo claim that the moment when European politicians were expecting an invitation was captured by the photographer.
The viral image is of poor quality, making it difficult to see the appearance of the people present in it. The man in the foreground resembles the President of France, and two women are sitting next to him, probably Ursula von der Leyen and George Meloni (an exact match is difficult to establish due to the quality of the photo). In addition, the silhouette of another participant is further visible, but it is difficult to guess who it could be, since other female politicians were not present at this meeting.
In photos and videos, published authoritative media and official departments, it is clear that the listed politicians were dressed differently. In particular, Emmanuel Macron's suit and tie were dark blue, while in the viral image they are black. Ursula von der Leyen wore an orange blouse, jacket and black trousers, and in the photograph we are interested in all the women are wearing dresses or skirts. Jorja Meloni also wore a pantsuit.
Reverse image search leads to a publication on the X page of a user with the username @Greg4Patriot, where the photo was posted for the first time. The picture quality in this post is much better than the viral posts. It is posted with a caption in French: “What they imagine VS what will actually happen.” In addition to the viral photo, there is another image of politicians walking through the hallways of the White House.
This post was made on August 17, the day before the start of negotiations in Washington. In good quality, it is also noticeable that the photo contains many artifacts characteristic of images generated by neural networks - the photo itself is unnaturally smoothed, and there are more feet on the floor than politicians sitting on chairs. Probability that both images were created using AI, tools to identify generated content Hive And Sightengine estimated at 99%.
However, the author of the image did not claim that it was authentic - irony is clearly read in his caption. Nevertheless, it was the poor-quality version of the photograph that was widely circulated, in which the signs of falsification are not so obvious. On August 19, after the photo went viral, the author reposted Post by Emmanuelle Saliba, a journalist specializing in visual content verification, where she commented on this picture: “Do I really need to prove to people that this photo was generated?”
Thus, the photo of European leaders waiting for Donald Trump to invite them to negotiations was created using AI. It was generated by social network user X, most likely as a joke.
Cover photo: social networks
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