A fake BBC News report that falsely accuses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of displaying a stolen painting has been circulating on X since April 21.
The footage appears to show the Ukrainian president sitting in his office. Underneath him, what appears to be a BBC News banner reads: “Stolen Cézanne painting identified in Zelensky’s video.” Indeed, there is a painting by the French painter hanging on the wall behind Zelensky.
The painting, called "Nature morte aux cerises" or “Still Life with Cherries” in English, was stolen in late March 2026 from a museum in the Italian region of Parma along with two other paintings: one by Auguste Renoir and another by Henri Matisse. The accounts sharing the fake BBC news report accuse Zelensky of getting the stolen painting through a mafia-like network of organised crime.
The image was notably shared by an account that supports American manosphere influencer Dan Bilzerian on X in a post that garnered more than 300,000 views. The screengrab was taken from a video made to look like a BBC news programme that lasts 1’30”.
This post falsely claims that Volodymyr Zelensky, "leader of the Jewish mafia”, obtained a stolen painting by Paul Cézanne. It features a screengrab purported to show the stolen painting in Zelensky’s office. © X
The news report starts with the background about the theft of the paintings. Then, it claims that the stolen painting was spotted hanging on the wall in Zelensky’s office in a video that the Ukrainian president posted of himself in mid-April – a video that was later deleted. The fake news report even features the video supposedly deleted by Zelensky, where you can, indeed, see the stolen painting behind him.
Fake news report and doctored footage of Zelensky
In just a few hours, just one X post (which was later deleted) featuring this fake news report garnered more than 400,000 views. However, when we searched the BBC’s website, there was no sign of this news report. The FRANCE 24 Observers team also contacted the British media outlet directly. In no uncertain terms, they said the video in question was “fake”.
So where did the footage showing the stolen Cézanne in Zelensky’s office come from? It turns out that the footage was doctored: the painting was added to a real video of Zelensky. The original video was posted on Zelensky’s YouTube page on January 19, 2026.
We found the original video that was used in the fake BBC news report by carrying out a reverse image search (to find out how, check out our handy guide). We checked with our colleagues at RFI’s Ukrainian service and they confirmed that the Ukrainian president says exactly the same thing in the original video and the doctored video. The backdrop is also identical, except for one detail: the painting behind the president differs in the two videos. Thus, we were able to conclude that an image of Cézanne’s painting was edited in, covering the painting that really hangs on his wall (see below).
At left is the original video that Volodymyr Zelensky posted on his YouTube account on January 19. At right is the doctored video where the original painting was replaced by Paul Cézanne’s "Nature morte aux cerises", which was stolen in March 2026 (outlined in red). It’s clear that the doctored video was made from the original January 2026 video because the words that Zelensky says are identical. © FRANCE 24 Observers
Regularly imitating media outlets
A fake news report made to look like it comes from a trusted media source – and one that criticises Zelensky directly – is straight out of the handbook of a Russian disinformation network called Storm-1516, as highlighted by the Gnida Project, which monitors this Russian network.
The fake news report was shared by X account Johnny Midnight, which our team has identified on multiple occasions as one of the main vectors of these disinformation operations (you can check out previous reports by clicking here or here).
This network, which has been active for the past three years, is thought to have been behind numerous disinformation operations targeting France and Western countries, as indicated in several reports, including one by the French government body tasked with fighting foreign interference, Viginum.
The US Treasury Department publicly linked Storm-1516, which was already active during the 2024 US elections, to Unit 29155 of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) as well as the Moscow-based think tank the Center for Geopolitical Expertise.
In February 2026, this network circulated another fake news report. The report, made to look like it came from French media outlet France Soir, falsely claimed that Emmanuel Macron was directly implicated in the Epstein files.
This article has been translated from the original in French by Brenna Daldorph.
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