A fake video impersonating the BBC accuses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of having hung a recently stolen painting by the artist Paul Cézanne in his office, with video supporting it. But the sequence was retouched from a filmed intervention by the Ukrainian president published before the theft of the work.

Published on: 04/22/2026 - 4:18 p.m.

Volodymyr Zelensky wrongly accused of concealment in a false BBC report: since April 21, a screenshot but also the entire video of an alleged subject of the British media began to circulate on X.

The screenshot in question shows the Ukrainian president in his office, accompanied by a banner attributed to the BBC which claims that a stolen Cezanne painting was "identified in a Zelensky video." Behind the Ukrainian president, we can see a painting by the French painter hanging on the wall of the Ukrainian president's office.

The work, entitled “Still Life with Cherries”, was stolen at the end of March 2026 in Italy from a museum in the Parma region with two other paintings by Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse. The accounts that share the image accuse Volodymyr Zelensky of having benefited from mafia networks to recover the painting.

Shared in particular by a fan account of the masculinist influencer Dan Bilzerian on

The video, which returns in the introduction to the theft of these paintings, then accuses Volodymyr Zelensky of having broadcast in mid-April an intervention filmed in his office with the Cézanne painting hanging in the background, before deleting the video from his networks. The alleged video deleted by Zelensky is even broadcast for a few seconds in this false report: we can in fact observe the still life of the French painter while the Ukrainian president speaks.

False reporting and manipulated intervention

In a few hours, the false report was seen more than 400,000 times on a publication - since deleted - published on X. Searches on the BBC website, however, did not reveal this subject. The British media, contacted by the editorial staff of France 24 Observers, indicated that the video in question was “false”.

However, where does the sequence showing the Cézanne painting in Volodymyr Zelensky's office come from? This is actually a retouched sequence, produced from an intervention shared on Volodymyr Zelensky's YouTube page on January 19, 2026.

This intervention, which can be found using a reverse image search (see our guide), is indeed the one used in the false BBC report: as the Ukrainian editorial staff of RFI was able to confirm with the editorial staff of France 24 Observers, the Ukrainian president pronounces exactly the same words in both sequences. The decor is also identical, except for one detail: the table behind the head of state is not the same. Cézanne's painting was therefore embedded in this sequence to replace the one actually behind the Ukrainian president (see below).

Regular media impersonation campaigns

Spoofed media, false reporting, Volodymyr Zelensky directly attacked: the modus operandi of this false information seems to come directly from the Russian disinformation operation entitled Storm-1516, as identified by one of the monitoring accounts on this operation, Gnida Project.

The false report was also shared by the Johnny Midnight X account, identified several times by the France 24 Observers editorial staff, as one of the main relays of these disinformation operations (like here or here).

Active for three years, this network is accused of being behind numerous disinformation operations targeting France and Western countries, as indicated by several reports, including one from the French service against foreign interference Viginum.

Storm-1516, already active during the 2024 American elections, was publicly attributed by the American Treasury to unit 29155 of the Russian military intelligence service (GRU) with the support of the Moscow think tank Center for Geopolitical Expertise.

Last February, this network disseminated false information by usurping the identity of the France Soir site to assert, on the basis of false emails, that the Epstein files demonstrated the direct involvement of Emmanuel Macron.

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