Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 19/04/2023
The video of a poster in Milan which shows how Zelensky is “sucking in” the money donated to Ukraine is not authentic.
A video clip showing an advertising poster with the face of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky was published on Instagram on April 6, 2023. At the top of the poster is the inscription “Donations for Ukraine” written in English. On the poster, there is an opening in one of the nostrils into which passersby insert bills so that it looks as if Zelensky is “sucking in” the money. The video was published with a description stating the following:
IN THE CENTER OF MILAN, AN ADVERTISEMENT HAS BEEN PLACED WITH ZELENSKY SUCKING IN BILLS 👃💶💶
By the time of writing this analysis, the video had over 17,000 interactions on Instagram. The same video was also published on Facebook, where it has been shared 868 times.
What are the facts?
The video of the alleged poster in which passersby insert “donations for Ukraine” shows the name of the Telegram channel from which the video was taken, @omarov_today. The video was published on this channel on April 4, 2023.
The poster in the video is located near the Milan Cathedral (Duomo di Milano). The cathedral is on Piazza Duomo.
Photo: Left – screenshot of a post from Telegram channel @omarov_today; right – photo of the cathedral, Steffen Schmitz, Wikimedia Commons.
The video was also shared in other languages (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Claims that a poster with the figure of Zelensky “sucking in” banknotes was put up in Milan were analyzed by several fact-checking platforms in the world, including Lead stories (10.4.2023), Open (11.4.2023) and our partner platform Raskrinkavanje from Montenegro (13.4.2023). As they explain in their analysis, all the evidence indicates that the video does not show an advertising poster that was actually placed in the centre of Milan.
In front of the Milan Cathedral, there is a poster of the same shape as the one in the video. The territory where the Milan Cathedral is located belongs to the City of Milan, and the approval of its authorities is necessary to place advertisements in the territory of this municipality. The representatives of this municipality denied to Lead stories and Open that they had given permission to put up a poster for collecting donations with the figure of Zelensky “sucking in money”.
As Lead stories states in the analysis, Anna Gallo, representative of the Public Relations Department of the City of Milan, stated for this platform: “Regarding the video showing the ‘pro-Ukrainian’ fundraising poster in Piazza Duomo, the City of Milan denies that it is the original video, because such a poster was never approved in places under municipal administration”.
The Open platform also states in its analysis that it contacted the security officers stationed in front of the Milan Cathedral, who confirmed to them that they had never seen such a poster. As stated in the analysis, even if someone had tried to put up such a poster without the necessary approval from the municipality, the police would certainly have intervened, since the area is covered by security cameras.
What does the poster at the Milan Cathedral really look like?
In the Google Street View image recorded in September 2018, the edges of the poster in front of the cathedral are slightly darker than in the video showing Zelensky’s face.
Photo: Google.com/maps
A journalist from the Open platform photographed and recorded the poster. At the time of writing their analysis, on April 11, 2023, there was no photo of Zelensky on it.
Photo: Open.online
The journalist also made a video of the poster, based on which the Open platform concludes in the analysis that the structure itself does not have enough space to place a mechanism inside that would enable the vacuuming of banknotes. The recording can be viewed in the analysis of the Open platform here.
The video of the poster in which Zelensky “sucks in” the donated money is of poor quality, but it is clearly visible that the frame is a different colour and that there is no damage on it that can be seen in the video recorded by the Open’s journalist.
Photo: Open.online
The president of Ukraine has previously been the target of disinformation about his alleged propensity for cocaine abuse. Raskrinkavanje wrote about other “evidence” for this narrative in several analyzes (1, 2).
Therefore, we evaluate the first publication of the claim that a poster of Zelensky “sucking in” money was placed in Milan, along with a video of this “poster”, as fake news. Other publications of this claim are rated as the distribution of fake news.