In August 2025, a photograph allegedly taken during a pro-Ukrainian demonstration before the meeting of the US and Russian presidents in Anchorage spread on the RuNet. It is alleged that it shows a poster that activists leaned against the bust of an American activist for black rights. We have verified the authenticity of this photo.
The photo went viral in mid-August. ""Martin Luther King (the abbreviation MLK is used in the inscription with the photo. - Ed.) was also a Ukrainian! He dreamed of a free Ukraine" (apparently, this phrase refers to his speech "I have a dream". - Ed.). Zelensky's fans brought their posters to the Martin Luther King memorial in Alaska," the captions said. Some bloggers argued that in this way Ukrainians living in the United States were desecrating the memory of the struggle of blacks for their civil rights: "Apparently, it seems to them that any historical figure should be recorded as one of their "Ukrainian heroes." Insolence and disrespect at the highest level."
According to the TGStat service, about 50 similar posts appeared on Telegram, which in total received about 450,000 views. Channels spoke about the photoRussian Kolobok and green stick"(130,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Sheikh Tamir"(114,000), "Alexander Semchenko"(71,000), "Actually in Kharkov"(36,000), "Crossbow says"(14,000), etc. Similar posts can be found on VKontakte (examples here, here, here And here), X (here, here And here), Facebook, LiveJournal and on some news websites.
In early August, US President Donald Trump announced meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. She passed August 15 in Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska. On the eve and day of the summit in this American state took place several actions of solidarity with Ukraine, some of them passed in Anchorage. By assessment the public association Stand Up Alaska, which was one of the organizers of the protests, involved about 1,000 people in demonstrations in this city.
“Verified” found information about only one rally, which on those dates was held directly next to the Martin Luther King memorial. The action, organized by the Anchorage Party for Socialism and Liberation, started August 15 at 17:30 local time (August 16 at 04:30 Moscow time). Two more demos were carried out nearby (6–7 min. on foot): August 15 from 23:00 And August 16 from 00:30 Moscow time. In an attempt to find other photographs of the poster depicted in the viral image, “Verified” studied photo and video reports on the pages of various organizations that organized these actions in Anchorage, but did not find any corresponding images there.
However, the primary source of the viral photo from the United States was not American or Ukrainian organizations or media. The earliest post, which featured a photo of a poster on a bust of Martin Luther King and which was tracked by “Verified,” appeared on the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel “Shaman Rahu"(5900 views). He mentioned as a distributor of fakes in dozens of our analyses. “Shaman Rahu” published the photo on August 15 at 12:44 Moscow time - a few hours before the above-mentioned actions near the memorial. Soon similar posts were released by the channels “Bear"(5400 views) and "Urgent and accurate"(2300), which also good familiar to our regular readers.
If you carefully study the distributed image, you can find signs of falsification on it. For example, in the viral photo, the shape of the nose and ear on the bust, as well as the texture of the material from which the sculpture and pedestal are made, differ from the same elements captured in other photographs available on the Internet. Differences are also noticeable in the background, which is also clearly visible when comparing a photograph of the poster with panorama streets in Google Street View. These include the location of trees and buildings, as well as the absence of lampposts in the viral photo.
Recently, “Verified” and other fact checkers have immediately sorted out several fake photos allegedly taken at Ukrainian rallies - for example, fake photographs with the inscriptions “I am against the agreement between Trump and Putin on the division of Ukraine" And "I am a dog, and Zelensky is a dog" These two fakes were created using AI, and the last one originally appeared in the Telegram channel “Shaman Rahu”.
It can be assumed that the photo of the poster on the memorial was also fully or partially generated by the neural network. “Verified” analyzed this photo using six tools for identifying AI images, and two services “agreed” with our assumption about the artificial nature of the picture. According to the results of the other detectors, it is highly likely that neural networks were not used to create a viral photo. Be that as it may, we have repeatedly reminded that such programs are sometimes give both false positive and false negative results.
Thus, the viral photo of a poster at the Martin Luther King memorial in Alaska was doctored. This photo first appeared on the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel, which had previously been repeatedly seen publishing this kind of fake news, a few hours before the start of pro-Ukrainian rallies at the bust of the American public figure. At the same time, the monument itself is noticeably different from the photo in open sources - the image was probably edited using AI.
Cover photo: social networks
- Is it true that a bar in Alaska has a dish in honor of Putin?
- Is it true that The Simpsons predicted Putin's visit to Alaska?
- Is it true that after the summit in Alaska, Arnold Schwarzenegger called Trump a wimp and a Putin fanboy?
- Is it true that American fighter jets painted a star in the Alaskan sky for Putin?
- Is this video of anti-Ukrainian posters in New York in September 2024 true?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
