Russia caught in embarrassing Photoshop fail trying to slur Volodymyr Zelensky

Russian Foreign Ministry mocked over bungled Photoshop
Russian invasion of Ukraine
Ukraine's Zelensky with Rishi Sunak on a visit earlier this month to Ukraine
PA
Josh Salisbury16 January 2024

Russia has been caught out attempting to slur Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky with an embarrassing Photoshop blunder.

The Russian Foreign Ministry posted a collage of images of Mr Zelensky with his arm around Rishi Sunak, alleging that it showed a tattoo on his hand stating there is no God.

But the collage also shows Mr Zelensky standing on the other side of the room of Mr Sunak in the exact picture supposedly showing him with the tattoo on his hand.

Among those pointing out the obvious mistake was Eliot Higgins, of the open source intelligence group Bellingcat, who said: “Guys, that's not how hands work.”

Another social media user, poking fun at the impossible angles in the photographs, said: “I for one would like to congratulate the Ukranians for developing non-euclidean optics.”

Russia is known to use disinformation tactics in its war in Ukraine. 

Last year, British military officials warned the Kremlin was using “disinformation” to exaggerate the scale of its small military gains on the battlefield.

Western officials have previously said the level of disinformation emanating from the Kremlin was “gaining” in volume, but is of “low quality”.

Speaking last year, officials said content justifying the war produced by disinformation outlets on Facebook has been viewed “more than 1.2 billion times globally”.

One official said messages sent by Russia to the Ukrainian people in an attempt to “break the will to resist” had “absolutely failed on every conceivable measure” as well as only managing a “moderate performance” in its primary goal of “regime security” in their own country.

The official, quoted as a source by the PA news agency, added: “What we see across Europe, with a couple of exceptions, is people are strong and are being resilient to Russian information manipulation.”

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