Fake#1 The current president of Equatorial Guinea came to power by overthrowing the pro-American government

Fake date: 7.09.2023

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, President of Equatorial Guinea, has recently visited Belarus and held negotiations with Alexander Lukashenko. In this context, propagandist Grigory Azarenok said that Teodoro Obiang Nguema had gained his power 44 years ago by overthrowing the pro-American government.

“He has been in power since 1979, when he'd carried out the coup against the colonists, against the pro-American and pro-French government. And now he is building a normal country, building a normal state”, Grigory Azarenok claimed on September 7 in his program ‘Azarenok.Napramuyu’. 

In fact, in 1979, Mbasogo carried out a military coup against his uncle, the first president of Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Macías Nguema, who had broken off diplomatic relations with the United States during his authority. Having come to power, the current president has immediately restored that relationship. 

In 1995, Equatorial Guinea discovered its new oil and gas fields. U.S. companies have provided developing those oil and gas fields. The U.S. is currently buying gas from Equatorial Guinea.

Fake#2 The ex-Minister of Defense of Ukraine rests on the yacht on the Cote d'Azur

Fake date: 5.09.2023

Alexei Reznikov was dismissed from Ukraine's Defense Minister position on September 5. And 5 days later, the Telegram channel Our Land published a photo that showed the ex-minister relaxing somewhere in Europe.

“Story of success. The dismissed Minister of Defense of Ukraine Reznikov is already hanging out on the yacht on the Cote d'Azur. He’s alive. His stash contains millions of dollars, if not billions”, the Telegram channel’s authors claimed in their post.

Besides, a few days before, the satirical outlet Panorama told their audience that the ex-minister was vacationing on his personal island.

Actually, this photo, taken on the yacht, was published on Alexey Reznikov’s Facebook back in 2020 when he proposed to his wife.

Fake#3 The German media published graffiti against Zelensky

Fake date: 13.09.2023

Berlin police are looking for an author of the mural with Zelensky the cannibal,  Russian news website EADaily reported on September 13.

“An unknown artist made graffiti on the wall of one of the Berlin buildings. It depicts the head of the Kyiv regime, Volodymyr Zelensky, devouring the severed hand of a Ukrainian soldier, convulsively clutching a machine gun”, they said in the article.

There is a screenshot of alleged Deutsche Welle's news with an image of this mural below the EADaily's article.

In response to the Weekly Top Fake team's request, Deutsche Welle said: 

“This screenshot is indeed a fake. It is supposed to look like a screenshot of the Deutsche Welle NEWS Instagram account when it posts news in Stories format. However, neither the image format nor the inscription font match.

We were unable to find the graffiti either in regional news reports or through a reverse image search, which suggests that it was created artificially. The vehicle registration plate is from Munich, so the place shown in the picture possibly is not even Berlin”.

Fake#4 Annalena Baerbock spends 9 thousand euros daily from the budget on makeup

Fake date: 11.09.2023

Annalena Baerbock, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany, spends thousands of euros daily from the government budget on her beauty. It was claimed by Marina Lavrukevich, the presenter of Belarusian state-run TV channel ONT, on September 11.

“Not even Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock received so much attention for her person, which, according to German media, spends 9 thousand euros from the budget daily on the services of makeup artists and stylists. Means, this is local taxpayers’ money,” Marina Lavrukevich claimed on the air of the program Our Time.

In fact, German media reported that Annalena Baerbock spent 137 thousand euros on makeup artist services in April last year. Dividing this amount by the number of her working days, we get daily expenses of about 5 hundred euros. But Russian TV channel RT reported about 9 thousand euros of her daily expenses in July 2023. The outlet also mentioned the alleged Bild’s publication. There is a link, that led to the website www.bild-de.at with a piece of fake information, while the web address of the real Bild’s article is www.bild.de.

The first link leads to the article with fake information about spending “per month”. While the real Bild talks about expenses "per year".

Fake#5 Technologies of the future are developing in Minsk, while Europe is in the Stone Age

Fake date: 6.09.2023

Russian blogger Roman Zubenko, who lives in Belgium, published the video on his TikTok on September 6. There was a Minsk store without a cashier and also a charging station for electric vehicles and electric buses shown here. He added the following comment to this video: 

“Minsk is beautiful, simply beautiful. Everything is developing, complete purity, a bit crazy, cosmic technologies. You guys have the best. 

Thanks to Batka* for all of that, don’t forget about that, please <...> I don't know when we will have all that here in Europe. In 20 years, probably. We are living in some kind of Stone Age here”.

*Batka is Lukashenko nickname.

Both the store without cashiers and the high-speed charging complex for electric vehicles and electric buses appeared at the end of last year near Napoleon Orda Street in Minsk. However, Europe uses the same technological solutions as well.

There were 27 thousand charging stations for electric cars in 2022 in Belgium, where Roman Zubenko lives. There are only 900 in Belarus. Over the past year, about two hundred “cashless stores” have opened around the world, mainly in China and the United States.

Many European retailers have also launched them. For example, Amazon, Aldi and Tesco have already opened such stores in London. And there are up to 50 Żabka Nano stores in Poland.

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