Russian president didn’t give speech warning of ‘satanic plans’ to depopulate the world
What was claimed
Russian president Vladimir Putin gave a speech about a “satanic plan” to depopulate the world through support of Ukraine and ensuing nuclear war.
Our verdict
There is no evidence Mr Putin ever gave this speech. Extracts from the alleged speech have been circulating online since at least 2018, long before the invasion of Ukraine.
A video shared more than 15,000 times on Facebook claims to contain the contents of a speech criticising “satanic plans” to depopulate the planet, supposedly delivered by Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The video, which has also been viewed thousands of times on TikTok, doesn’t show Mr Putin talking, but rather the audio of an unidentified person reading what is claimed to be a transcript of his speech, as part of a conversation with another unidentified person.
In this speech, Mr Putin is alleged to address “the countries of the world” and supposedly accuses them of wanting to “deliberately reduce the world’s population by sacrificing innocent lives” and having “satanic plans to reduce the population of the planet”.
He allegedly goes on to talk about “lies” spread by “mainstream media", and supposedly says “if America and Europe do not end these plans you will face not only God’s judgement but mine as well”.
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The person reading Mr Putin’s alleged speech explicitly ties these comments to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, explaining them in the context of the threat of nuclear war and claiming that Mr Putin’s words are a “last warning” to Europe and the US.
But there’s no evidence that the Russian president ever actually made this speech—posts claiming to share his words have been circulating online since at least 2018, long before the current conflict broke out.
Longer versions of the alleged speech, including those containing claims about LGBTQ+ people and Islam have been fact checked before.
Full Fact could find no reliable record of the Russian president ever making a speech using this language. In 2021 experts told Reuters that they believed the speech to be fake, pointing to a lack of record of it on the Kremlin website.
This is not the first time we have seen online misinformation about President Putin—we have previously checked claims about him during the pandemic and following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Image courtesy of the press service of the Russian president |
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This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because experts have said Mr Putin did not say this, and supposed extracts have been circulating for at least five years.
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