Tokyo video doctored to add anti-Zelensky billboard
- Published on August 1, 2023 at 21:49
- 5 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"Billboard that says 'Stop Zelensky, Stop War' in Japan," says a July 31, 2023 post from The Post Millennial, a conservative Canadian website that has previously spread misinformation.
Similar posts sharing the same video rocketed across Twitter, which is rebranding as "X," and other sites such as Facebook, Reddit and TikTok.
The clip also spread in Spanish, Chinese and Italian.
But matching footage (archived here) from nearly three years ago shows the same digital billboard making no mention of the country's war with Russia or its leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky.
AFP found the original video, titled "Night Walk in Tokyo Shibuya," by conducting a reverse image search using Google Lens. It was posted to YouTube on October 18, 2020, more than a year before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Starting at approximately the 21:20 mark, the 2020 video shows the same cars, bikes, pedestrians, signs and movie posters that can be seen in the manipulated version now circulating online.
There are other indications that the footage predates the war, including the many pedestrians wearing masks outdoors amid the then-raging Covid-19 pandemic.
Movie posters on a building that includes a cinema can also be seen advertising "Mio's Cookbook" and "God of Novels," films that premiered in 2020, according to IMDb (archived here and here). Stock photos AFP found of the building from October 2020 show the same displays.
AFP geolocated the footage to an intersection near Shibuya Toei Plaza in the popular Shibuya ward of Tokyo, Japan (archived here).
Days before the altered video spread online, AFP reported that Japan had scaled up its sanctions against Russia, revealing on July 28 an expanded list that includes an export ban on electric vehicles.
AFP previously debunked a similarly manipulated video that inserted an anti-Zelensky banner into footage of New York City.
AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about the Ukraine-Russia conflict here.
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