Russian propaganda spreads fake story about Pope Francis and J.D. Vance criticizing Zelensky

Russian Telegram channels are circulating fake covers of French newspapers Liberation and Le Figaro featuring fabricated quotes. The fake covers claim that U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, after meeting with the late Pope Francis, said: "Pope Francis was very upset during our last meeting that Zelensky does not want peace."

This is fake. The original covers contain no such quote.

It should be noted that in comments to The Washington Post, J.D. Vance shared his impressions of his meeting with the Pope shortly before his death, without mentioning either Volodymyr Zelensky or Ukraine.

Additionally, Russian propagandists have been spreading a fake "cover" of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, allegedly showing a cartoon of President Volodymyr Zelensky "begging for money" from behind a wheelchair-bound Pope Francis.

This, too, is fake. No such cover exists on Charlie Hebdo's official website or social media accounts.

The forged propaganda cover falsely claims to be from an issue dated April 23. In reality, Charlie Hebdo published a completely different cartoon on that date, unrelated to Ukraine or the late Pope.

These Russian fakes aim to convince the world that Ukraine's president is the sole obstacle to peace. However, the true culprit behind the war and the one refusing peace is the Kremlin dictator, Vladimir Putin. He is the one who launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Claims of Putin's "readiness" for peace are contradicted by the actions of the Russian military during the so-called "Easter truce": according to President Zelensky, Russian forces violated the ceasefire almost 3,000 times on April 20 alone.

Russian propaganda routinely spreads fake cartoons depicting Ukraine's president allegedly published in major cities around the world or in Western media. Ukrinform fact-checkers have previously debunked several similar fabrications, including fake covers of Charlie Hebdo about the Ukrainian Peace Formula and the German political satire magazine Titanic.

The goal of this disinformation campaign is to create a negative image of Volodymyr Zelensky internationally and promote the narrative that Western societies and governments allegedly no longer support Ukraine.

Previously, Russian propagandists spread fake claims that Ukraine hires actresses for news reports about Russian aggression.

Andriy Olenin