Original article (in Serbian) was published on 03/03/2022
A video of Russian President Vladimir Putin playing the anthem “God of Justice” on the piano appeared on Twitter today. The user who shared this video wrote that this would make even bigger and stronger nations and states proud, and now it is presented to us”. So far, the tweet has been shared more than 160 times and received around 500 likes. Although many people in the comments realized that it was a montage, the post was not deleted. In the original recording, it can be heard that Putin is not playing the anthem of Serbia but short parts from two Russian compositions.
The post about how Vladimir Putin did an honorable thing for Serbia by playing the anthem “God of Justice” caused ridicule in the comments. There are also those who wonder if the recording is authentic.
At first glance, if you pay a little attention, you can see that the recording was used for manipulation – in the lower right corner, it features “Power Director”, which is an application for editing videos. Also, the movements of Putin’s fingers do not match the rhythm and melody of the anthem.
It takes less than a minute to authenticate the video. If we type “Putin plays the piano” into Google, we get numerous results that reveal where and when the video was made and which composition is in question.
The video appeared on the YouTube channel of the AP agency in May 2017. According to this agency, Putin visited Chinese President Xi Jinping, and while he was waiting for the meeting to start, he sat down at the piano.
As can be heard in the video, he does not play the anthem of Serbia, but short parts from the composition “Moscow Windows” by Tikhon Khrennikov (which can be heard in the video below), as well as a part from “Evening Song” by composer Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi.
This fake claim – that the Russian president is playing the Serbian national anthem – appeared on the website Espreso in 2020 and on the website Srbijadanas.com.
By the way, “God of Justice” is not the only composition attached to this recording. The video became viral when it appeared, so it got its different versions in which Putin “played” many things on the piano, from hip hop songs and the Soviet anthem, to the hit “Despacito”.