Fake newspaper and magazine covers are a tactic often used in Russian propaganda.
A fake version of the front cover from the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo is doing the rounds on social media.
It depicts Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Quasimodo, one of the main characters of The Hunchback of Notre Dame by French writer Victor Hugo.
The headline on the alleged front cover says “What’s a reopening of Notre Dame without a hunchback?”, referring to the reopening of the iconic Parisian cathedral in December.
Also featured in the image are French President Emmanuel Macron shaking hands with US President-elect Donald Trump.
The picture is typically shared with captions that mock Zelenskyy and his efforts to shore up support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
Some say that even Charlie Hebdo has turned against Zelenskyy, while others claim that it shows the West is turning against the president.
However, the evidence shows that the front cover is fake and suggests that it’s part of Russia’s propaganda campaign against Ukraine that has simply copied Charlie Hebdo’s art style.
Many of the accounts sharing the image are pro-Russian accounts and media outlets, suggesting a concerted attempt to try and sour support for Kyiv.
It’s been seen many times before that Russian propaganda uses false newspaper and magazine front covers to spread misinformation and destabilise support for a given cause.
For example, it was revealed earlier in the year that pro-Russian actors purposefully barraged journalists with fake news in an effort to spread verification resources thin and amplify the reach of disinformation.
Fake Euronews reports were also used as part of the disinformation campaign, dubbed “Operation Overload”.
This particular Charlie Hebdo cover is fake because it doesn’t appear anywhere on the magazine’s website.
The image contains the issue number 1690, and when we search for that issue on the site, a completely different cover shows up.
This one depicts caricatures of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei as the Three Wise Men from the Christmas nativity story.
It intends to mock al-Assad’s flight to Moscow, where he is now under Putin’s protection, and has nothing to do with Zelenskyy.
ADVERTISEMENTAn insurgency in late November and December overthrew long-time president al-Assad and ended Syria’s uprising-turned-civil war that started in 2011. The former leader has taken refuge in Russia.
The fake cover was also supposedly posted on Monday 9 December, but that can’t be true because Charlie Hebdo publishes its issues on Wednesdays.
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