After the news Donald Trump, president-elect of America, didn’t invite President of Ukraine Zelenskyy to his inauguration, pro-Russian sources shared the news about the graffiti seemingly created by a French artist OakOak, on which he depicted Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a leash near Macron and Trump.
What happened?
On December 19, the Russian Telegram channel “Medved” (“Медведь”, “bear” from Russian (archive) — ed.) posted a message that French artist OakOak created street art depicting President of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a dog on the leash that waits while the President of France Macron and American president-elect Donald Trump talk. As “evidence” for this art’s existence, the post presents the photos with this graffiti with logos of French media TFI and the morning program Bonjour ! La Matinale TF1 put on the pictures.
“Macron wants to get Zelenskyy to Trump’s inauguration in the USA. How French artist OakOak sees it: Zelenskyy the dog is leashed to “place for dogs”, while white people are greeting each other,” Telegram channels write.
The news was also shared by Telegram channels Одесса zа победу (“Odesa for victory” from Russia, archive) and Vadym Sava (archive), and Instagram account sobre la patria (archive).
Analysis
We searched a query “street art with Zelenskyy created by OakOak” on the official resources of French telechannel TF1 INFO, whose logo is put on the picture. It is a private national media that has an official website and social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube. Following the OakOak query, we didn’t find any mentions of this street art or other mentions of the artist on the digital platforms of this TV channel.
Next also found out that these are the screenshots of the video from the mobile version of their website. So, we’ve checked the video section there.
Donald Trump said that he didn’t invite Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his inauguration during a press conference on December 16. We’ve checked all videos the channel made during December 2024 but didn’t find anything with graffiti, mentions of OakOak artists, or news about Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
So, after we’ve made sure that this news wasn’t published by a French telechannel, we wrote specifically to artist OakOak, allegedly the author of the art. OakOak, a French artist, an urbanist, who transforms the flaws in urban space into original street art.
We wrote OakOak on Instagram, sent him this post with supposedly his street art, and asked to confirm or deny if it’s his. OakOak responded that he did not create this graffiti and added that it is not his art style.
So, the information about French artist OatOak laughing at Zelenskyy and depicting him on the leash is a fake spread by pro-Russian channels is fake, created to discredit Ukraine’s President and once again create a picture of world politicians alienating him.
Conclusions: Fake
Author: Vasylyna Haviak
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