Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 06/06/2022
Vladimir Putin is widely reputed to be a macho man among his supporters both in and outside of Russia. So far, we have been seeing images of him practicing judo techniques, playing hockey and exploring Russian wilderness shirtless. All his escapades never go unnoticed.
It is no different this time around, as a “powerful” statement is being attributed to him, although it did not in fact originate from him. A post of a Facebook user quotes as follows:
The statement of the century “To forgive the terrorists is up to God, but to send them to him is up to me” – Vladimir Putin
It is difficult to tell whether this Facebook user was alluding to the raging war in Ukraine, believing that Putin’s statement was addressed to Ukrainians. Or, was he instead referring to the situation back in 2015, when this information first appeared?
Back then, the very same quote made it to the media spotlight, when Putin allegedly “boomed out” and swore he would destroy the Islamic State terrorist organization. Putin did talk about revenge against the Islamic State, as spurred by the downing of a plane over Sinai, as well as by the terrorist attack in Paris.
Back then, it was a Russia Today journalist Remi Maalouf that stirred a commotion in the media by tweeting a supposed Vladimir Putin’s quote, which was never in fact made by him.
The existing links to Maalouf’s original tweet are not working, and it might be because she deleted the tweet promptly. She then posted another one in which she apologized to her followers:
“This is the danger of social media! I took Putin’s quote from a post on Facebook & it turned out to be false. I apologize” – Maalouf posted in 2015.
Back in 2015, just like in the present, one could have rather easily track down the source of the quote. Especially since it was made by the Academy Award-winning and one of the most popular actors of today – Denzel Washington.
In the 2004 movie Man on Fire, Washington utters the following line:
“Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting.“
But even some US media lacked the patience to double-check the information in 2015 and shared it on their platform.
It is not the first time that a quote is attributed to someone who has nothing to do with it.
The same thing happened in 2001, after September 11, when the very same quote was attributed to former US General Norman Schwarzkopf. The story is perpetuated even 20 years later.
As Vladimir Putin obviously never spoke these words, and as it reignites the old narrative, this post was flagged as – fake news and recycLIE.
The “Fake News” rating is assigned to the original media report (entirely produced by the media that originally published it) that contains factually incorrect claims or information. The contents labelled as fake news are those undoubtedly recognized as having been created and disseminated with the intention of disinforming the public and presenting an otherwise completely false claim as a fact.
The “recycLIE” label is awarded to media content that re-uses the already published information without a clear indication of the time period that the content refers to. An article gets recycled at a certain point in order to manipulate media users into drawing the wrong conclusions.