Propagandists are spreading images on social media of a purported cover of the Turkish satirical magazine LeMan, depicting a dead Biden and a calm Xi Jinping. Along with the illustration is a Turkish phrase: “If you sit by the river for a long time, you can see the body of your enemy floating by”. The reports came after Biden met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping from November 15 to 17 in San Francisco, during which Joe Biden called him a dictator. However, this image is fake.

Specialists from the VoxCheck project drew attention to it. They found out that LeMan magazine had not published an issue with such a cover. It contains the following data - date and issue number: November 17, 2023, issue 45 since the beginning of the year, as well as another issue number - 1652. However, they did not find confirmation of this cover on the official LeMan pages on social networks. VoxCheck also checked to see if issue number 45 or 1652 was published on November 17th and found that LeMan had not published any new issues at that time. Issue number 45 (or 1652) did not appear until November 22 and had a different cover dedicated to living conditions in the hostels.

By spreading such fake news, propagandists want to create the impression that the foreign press is skeptical not only of the United States, but of the West as a whole. Creating false covers of foreign publications is a regular practice of Russian propagandists, as Detector Media has repeatedly written about.