Georgian-language Facebook accounts published a video on social media with the following description: (1; 2; 3) “Romanian fans chant “Putin!” at a match against Ukraine”. In fact, the disseminated information is fake, and the video is edited.
Several important details question the authenticity of the video. Notably, the video was disseminated in the form of an Instagram Story, which gets deleted after 24 hours. Also, the username of the Instagram user is not visible, which would have allowed us to check the information directly with the primary source. Verification is also complicated because the standing fans are seen from behind, therefore, their faces are not visible, and it is impossible to determine the correspondence between the voice and lip movements.
The video went viral on social networks in different languages (1; 2;). Several articles about this topic were published in Romanian media (1; 2; 3). The Orange Sport article states that the video was originally posted on X by a page called Censored Men, which later removed the video. Later, according to Romanian media, the Italian sports newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport published an article using the fake video, in which, as Orange Sport writes, “unreasonably criticized the Romanian fans for the shouts invented by social media users.” The Italian newspaper article has since been deleted.
It is also interesting that only one video about the topic can be found on the internet. Furthermore, the widespread video is not found in any reliable foreign language media.
The Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security of Ukraine also responded to the claim and said that the disseminated information was false. According to the post, the fans were not chanting “Putin” but “Путін – ху*ло!“ (Putin Khu*lo). On X, an identical video with shouting Путін – ху*ло is also circulating. If we listen carefully, we will find that these two videos are identical, with one difference – in the viral one, one word – ху*ло (Khu*lo) is not heard. Most likely, this part was edited, which changed the context of the video.
The German publication Bild also wrote about the Romania-Ukraine match. We read in their article that at the match, as a sign of solidarity, about 40,000 Romanians chanted “Ukraine”, which was “a very emotional episode”.
In addition, some Facebook accounts also wrote in the post that the Romanian fans unfurled the flag of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (ДНР), which they confirmed with a corresponding photo.
In reality, this information is also false. When watching the full version of the match, at this moment (seen from 44:27) the so-called DPR flag is not visible. This claim was also published by Russian-language propaganda media otulets, in particular, ТАСС, РЕН ТВ, Lenta.ru, Vesti.ru, and others, although later, some of them, for example, Московский Комсомолец admitted in an article that the photo was fake.
Therefore, the above-said claim that Romanians were chanting “Putin” is not confirmed.
