A recent photo of Vladimir Putin meeting with Western leaders? It’s wrong

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, relations have become extremely tense between NATO member countries and Moscow. In this context, a photo of Vladimir Putin, seated at the end of a table several meters from his interlocutors, has been circulating since the end of March on social networks in French-speaking Africa. According to Internet users, it shows a recent interview between the Russian president and British, German or American political representatives. But it is false: this photo was taken in 2022 in Moscow during a meeting which no foreign leader attended.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin receives [sic] the German chancellery, the representative of the American congress, the chancellor, England and European delegate on an 18 m table [sic]”, says the author of a message circulating on Facebook (1,2), with irony.

This allegation is accompanied by a photo of the Russian president seated at the end of a long rectangular table facing around ten people seated at the other end.

Screenshot taken on Facebook on May 6, 2024

On TikTok, Internet users claim that this interview dates from March 28, 2024, using the same image in support.

These publications are distributed online while the war continues in Ukraine, since the invasion of the country by Russia in February 2022. In this context, numerous messages relayed on social networks in French-speaking Africa fuel a pro-perception. Kremlin events, sometimes seeking to ridicule Ukraine (see here).

In the comments of the posts that we check, several Internet users also express their admiration for Vladimir Putin, “the president of presidents” according to one of them.

“Very good Putin, you should never trust enemies [sic]”, writes another.

But, there is no record of such a recent meeting between the Russian president and Western leaders.

An AFP correspondent in Moscow confirms that Vladimir Putin has met almost no Western leader (European Union or United States) in person since the start of the war in Ukraine on February 24, 2022; with the exception of a meeting with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer in April 2022 in Moscow (AFP dispatch archived here) and another with Hungarian leader Viktor Orban (who has maintained close ties with the Kremlin) in mid-October 2023, on the sidelines of a summit on Belt Road (New Silk Road) in China (archived link here).

An image from 2022

To understand the original context of the visual posted online, we performed a reverse image search and found the same photo in articles about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as archived here and here.

The photograph is, each time, credited to the name of Alexei Nikolsky followed by that of an international press agency, notably the American agency Associated Press (AP).

We continued the search in the AP image bank by entering the keywords “Russian President Vladimir Putin Alexei Nikolsky.

We find, once again, the same image as that which is shared on social networks. But his caption makes no mention of the presence of foreign diplomats alongside Vladimir Putin.

Translated from English, it states: “Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, leads a meeting on economic issues in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Feb. 28, 2022.

The author of the photograph, Alexei Nikolsky, took this photo for the Russian news agency Sputnik. It was then distributed by international news agencies.

The original caption of this photo therefore has nothing to do with the misleading message that accompanies it on social networks.

To identify the people seated at the same table as Vladimir Putin, we translated the caption of this photograph into Russian for a Google search.

We thus obtained the details of this meeting, documented in a series of photos published on the official website of the Russian Presidency (link archived here).

The Russian President’s agenda for February 28, 2022 reports on a meeting he led on the economy and finance and specifies the identity, supporting photos, of the various Russian representatives present at this meeting.

It is precisely “Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, Presidential Advisor Maxim Oreshkin, Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov and President of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina.

There are therefore no representatives of Western governments there.

On the other hand, we found no credible trace of a recent meeting between Vladimir Putin and leaders of American and Western governments, gathered around the same table.

The spectacular dimension of the tables around which Vladimir Putin received some of his diplomatic interlocutors has already provoked strong reactions in the past, in the international press and on social networks.

On February 11, 2022, for example, a six-meter-long white table was set up between the Russian and French leaders during a visit by Emmanuel Macron to Moscow, less than two weeks before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine (dispatch AFP archived here).

At the time, the images of this interview had generated numerous comments online – some seeing it as a sign of Mr. Putin’s coldness towards Mr. Macron – while the provision aimed to respect a health distance after the refusal of the French president to undergo a Covid test in Russia.

A few days later, on February 15, 2022, Mr. Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke around a white table several meters long (AFP dispatch archived here).

Ukraine Support Front

Diplomatic relations between Russia and the member countries of NATO, a political-military alliance of countries in Europe and North America, have been increasingly tense since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022.

The NATO bloc provides visible support to kyiv.

At the start of the conflict, faced with the advance of Russian troops, kyiv had urgently received tens of thousands of light weapons (AFP dispatch archived here). Ukraine’s allies then sent it missile defense systems, including the American Patriot, to deal with strikes on infrastructure and cities.

At the beginning of 2023, to end the trench warfare that was taking hold in the east, the Ukrainians obtained modern heavy tanks: American Abrams (delivered since the end of September), British Challengers and especially German Leopards, reputed to be among the best in the world. world.

EU leaders, for their part, agreed at the beginning of February 2024 to provide new financial aid of 50 billion euros over four years (33 billion in loans and 17 billion in donations), an envelope which had long been blocked by the reluctance of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

At the end of March, President Volodymyr Zelensky once again urged Ukraine’s allies to “speed up delivery“of F-16 fighter jets and to transfer additional Patriot (air defense system) batteries.

After months of negotiations, American parliamentarians finally voted for a vast military and economic assistance plan for Ukraine, totaling $61 billion.