Putin’s speech was not recorded on February 21: “Novaya Gazeta” is falsifying

On February 24, hours after the start of the Russian-initiated hostilities in Ukraine, the Russian “Novaya Gazeta” published on its social media pages that the Russian President’s morning speech was recorded a few days ago, on February 21. The media outlet attached a photo containing the metadata of the video.

Речь Путина об объявлении войны была записана еще вечером 21 февраля, в понедельник. Убедиться в этом можно, скачав видео с сайта Кремля и проверив его свойства. pic.twitter.com/ZRwgdwB8ni

— Новая Газета (@novaya_gazeta) February 24, 2022

According to this information, Putin’s speech lasted about 55 minutes and 56 seconds and was recorded in the evening of February 21 at about 19:00.

The publication quickly spread on various pages of social networks.

Fact Investigation Platform revealed, however, that “Novaya Gazeta”‘s statement is not true․ The photo, which is attributed to the speech of February 24, actually refers to another broadcast of Putin’s speech on February 21, during which the latter announced the decision to recognize the independence of Lugansk and Donetsk “people’s republics.”

Without checking the metadata of the video, one can see that Putin’s speech lasted exactly 55 minutes and 56 seconds.

We can use a number of online tools to check the video metadata. If we check the link to Putin’s speech on February 24 on exifmeta.com, we can see that the data differs from the data in the photo published by “Novaya Gazeta.”

Accordingly, Vladimir Putin recorded the video of the announcement of launching a war against Ukraine on February 24, and the speech lasted about 28 minutes.

 Ani Avetisyan