Post falsely claims to show DRC leader celebrating Valentine's Day in Germany while conflict rages at home

The March Movement (M23) fighters seized an airport serving Bukavu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo a day before the African Union’s (AU) February 2025 summit began in Ethiopia. A post shared on X claimed to show the DRC’s leader, Felix Tshisekedi, celebrating Valentine’s Day in Germany while conflict was raging at home. But this is misleading; the image shows Tshisekedi surprising his wife in the DRC on her birthday back in 2021. The Congolese leader missed the 2025 AU summit because he was in Germany for the Munich Security Conference.  

“As his country is falling apart, with the city of Bukavu falling to the M23 fighters, and as the AU Peace and Security Council meets in Addis Ababa to discuss this deteriorating situation in DRC, President Felix Tshisekedi is celebrating Valentine’s Day in Germany,” reads an X post published on February 15, 2025, and shared more than 400 times.

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Screenshot of the misleading post, taken on February 20, 2025

The claim was published by Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda (archived here).

Tshisekedi is seen in the picture handing a bouquet of flowers to a woman wearing a purple outfit. Some people are wearing masks and there is a cake on a table.

Two days before the post was published by Mwenda, Tshisekedi arrived in Germany with his wife and First Lady Denise Nyakeru for the 61st Munich Security Conference (archived here and here).

A day later, on Valentine’s Day, the Rwandan-backed M23 group captured an airport in Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province in eastern DRC (archived here and here).

Although Tshisekedi was out of the country, the image is old and unrelated to the latest fighting ravaging the country.

Birthday celebration

AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches and found that it was published on X by the Voice of Congo nearly four years ago, on March 9, 2021 (archived here).

According to the post, the photos show Tshisekedi surprising Nyakeru on her birthday.

Matching features – their attire, the DRC flag on Tshisekedi’s right, the cake – can be seen in the photos published in 2021 and the image in the misleading post. 

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Screenshots comparing the misleading post (left) and the photos published by Voice of Congo in 2021

A video capturing the moment was published on Facebook the same day (archived here).

Photos from the celebration were shared elsewhere on social media (archived here and here).

Munich meetings

Tshisekedi’s Valentine’s Day in Munich was spent in meetings with Richard Grenell, the American special envoy in charge of specific missions, and Maxime Prevot, Belgium’s deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister (archived here and here).

While at the conference, he called for sanctions against Rwanda for its role in the DRC conflict (archived here).

He reportedly cut short his trip following the news of M23’s advancement toward Bukavu (archived here) but missed the AU summit in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, where African leaders discussed regional concerns, including the escalating violence in the DRC (archived here and here).

The DRC’s Prime Minister Judith Suminwa Tuluka attended the summit in Tshisekedi’s place.

M23 fighters seized Bukavu on February 16, 2025, as the AU summit ended and several weeks after capturing North Kivu's capital, Goma (archived here).

AFP reported that the armed group is now moving toward the town of Uvira near the Burundi border (archived here).