A photo of graffiti allegedly in Washington, allegedly made for the Reuters news agency, is being circulated online. It shows two rats with Israeli and Ukrainian flags “fighting” for an American dollar.

But this is a fake photo. The photo with graffiti was compiled. In fact, checking the photo in a special FotoForensics tool showed that the image was probably edited. Moreover, Reuters did not publish such a photo on its official website, as well as on X, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. Also on the building depicted in the fake, a banner of the American commercial real estate agency in Los Angeles - illi Commercial Real Estate is visible.

Our colleagues, fact-checkers of VoxCheck, checked the photos of all properties available for rent and sale on the official website of illi Commercial Real Estate and did not find a single property similar to the fake. In addition, the fakers claim that the photos were taken in Washington. However, there are no properties available for purchase/rent in Washington on the map of properties.

We have documented fakes many times, whether they involve fake graffiti, foreign magazine covers/newspaper columns, or advertising videos. In this way, propagandists aim to show that their rhetoric (for example, that Zelenskyi is hated by the whole world) is also repeated in the West. This may make readers think that the public is really unhappy with Ukraine. And especially when the authors use elements of popular culture, implying that people are laughing at the situation in Ukraine and that the Ukrainian agenda is a reason for Europe to laugh.

For example, we recently reported that anonymous people were spreading a fake story from the supposedly French publication Le Figaro, which spoke of a “Ukrainian refugee killer”.