Published
Video duration:
7 mins
This is the story of a mysterious graffiti that appeared on a building in Montreuil in the Paris suburbs. The drawing allegedly caricatures President Volodymyr Zelensky, devouring a Ukrainian soldier. The street art work is supposed to illustrate the rise of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in the West… Except that it is in reality a manipulated image, like fake graffiti allegedly seen in Berlin, London, The Hague and shared by pro-Russian accounts.
Viral posts on Facebook and Twitter claim that giant graffiti by Volodymyr Zelensky is appearing on European walls, including in Montreuil in the Paris suburbs and in Berlin in Germany.
In the published images, we see the Ukrainian president, caricatured as a cannibal, devouring the legs or arms of soldiers sent to the front. The subtext propagated by the pro-Russian accounts: Western support for kyiv would gradually fade.
The France 24 Observers editorial team carried out an investigation into these alleged works of street art. Even though social media posts claim that French and German media have confirmed their existence, this is not the case. The pseudo-log captures are fake, sometimes crudely produced.
Our investigation has shown that no local resident has heard of this alleged graffiti… nor has the Montreuil town hall. And on the German side, the image does not show Berlin as claimed but Warsaw in Poland. There, no trace of real graffiti there either.
Both photos are actually manipulated images, as our video proves using advanced forensic analysis techniques.