Did a graffiti mural of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a "cannibal" eating a ZSU - the Armed Forces of Ukraine - soldier's arm recently appear on a residential building in Berlin, Germany? No, that's not true: The image is fabricated and the building with the alleged mural is in Warsaw, Poland.
An episode containing the claim was shared on a YouTube channel (at the 38:54 mark) of Belarusian state-controlled ONT TV Channel and reappeared in a TikTok video (archived here), published by npr_by_ on September 18, 2023. The text on the video (translated from Russian by Lead Stories staff) reads:
This week a mural appeared in Berlin, on which Germans depicted Zelenskyy as a cannibal.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Sep 21 07:13:20 2023 UTC)
The building shown in the video is not in Berlin, Germany. Lead Stories geolocated it with the help of Google Maps Street View (see picture below). An image captured in August 2021 shows the high-rise with its distinctive features appearing also in the TikTok video. The exact address is 4 Ignacego Potockiego in Warsaw, Poland, according to Google Maps. The similarities between the two pictures include the color of the building, the lining of the lowest balcony and the position of the street light. However, in the TikTok image the Polish flag was replaced by the German and the street name panel was removed.
(Source: Google Street View screenshot taken on Thu Sep 21 07:38:07 2023 UTC)
The image on Google Maps was taken more than two years ago. As of September 21, 2023, Lead Stories has been unable to verify if the mural is on the building or if it ever was.
