Pro-Russian sources, citing Fox News, CNN and the New York Post, are spreading the “news” that in the American city of Arlington, where the Pentagon is located, graffiti has appeared depicting an F-16 aircraft lost in Ukraine and the caption: “Is this what we pay for?” The work is attributed to street artists OSGEMEOS. The propagandists add that the artists wanted to draw attention to the irrational spending of American taxes to provide weapons to Ukraine.

In fact, this “news” is not true, writes the StopFake project. Screenshots from the media that allegedly spread information about the graffiti are fake. A search on the websites of Fox News, CNN and the New York Post for the headlines given in the publication yielded no results. Also, no other authoritative media published the corresponding news.

There is no photo of this graffiti on the website or Instagram page of Brazilian street artists OSGEMEOS. It is also worth noting that the works of brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, who are behind the OSGEMEOS project, have a different visual style, completely different from the graffiti from F-16. Their graffiti usually depict surreal scenes, rather than commenting on current political events.

Recall that one of the F-16 fighters crashed on August 26, 2024. The pilot of the plane, Oleksii “Moonfish” Mes, died in the crash. During his last combat sortie, the military man managed to destroy three cruise missiles and one attack drone. The investigation is clarifying the causes of the incident and is considering a number of versions. The previously put forward assumption that the F-16 could have been shot down by friendly fire from a Patriot complex is considered unlikely by US military officials interviewed by The New York Times.

With such fakes, Russia is trying to spoil relations between Ukraine and its Western partners in order to cast doubt on the need to provide military assistance. Earlier, Detector Media refuted information that Ukrainian refugees in Wroclaw created graffiti saying “Our Father Bandera - children, do not learn it in Polish, but learn it in Ukrainian”.