“Putin’s hand crosses the microphone”: the unfounded suspicions on the viral video

Probably marked by recent pictures of Putin In an interview with the Security Council of the Russian Federation, in which he sat at a sidereal distance from the officials present, several users on Twitter found the proximity of the Russian leader to the flight attendants of the Aeroflot airline strange, during a meeting promoted in view of International Women’s Day.

Doubts increased when someone posted an excerpt from the video of the meeting on Twitter in which Putin’s hand seems to cross the microphone in front of him. For some it is clear proof: the video is fake, Putin was not really in that place and was added to the scene only at a later time thanks to the green screen technique.

The video in question, on the other hand, is authentic and the problem – as already observed in the past on the occasion of a much discussed video of US President Biden – it’s about the video compression that Twitter does. In fact, the same scene, observed in high resolution on YouTube, does not present any distortion of the images: Putin’s hand passes behind the microphone. As if that were not enough, there are several photos of the meeting released by the Reuters agency, in which Putin and the flight attendants are immortalized side by side on the sidelines of the event.

edited by Pier Luigi Pisa

editing Marta Della Rocca