A fake BBC News report that falsely accuses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of displaying a stolen painting has been circulating on X since April 21.
The footage appears to show the Ukrainian president sitting in his office. Underneath him, what appears to be a BBC News banner reads: “Stolen Cézanne painting identified in Zelensky’s video.” Indeed, there is a painting by the French painter hanging on the wall behind Zelensky.
The painting, called "Nature morte aux cerises" or “Still Life with Cherries” in English, was stolen in late March 2026 from a museum in the Italian region of Parma along with two other paintings: one by Auguste Renoir and another by Henri Matisse. The accounts sharing the fake BBC news report accuse Zelensky of getting the stolen painting through a mafia-like network of organised crime.
The image was notably shared by an account that supports American manosphere influencer Dan Bilzerian on X in a post that garnered more than 300,000 views. The screengrab was taken from a video made to look like a BBC news programme that lasts 1’30”.
The news report starts with the background about the theft of the paintings. Then, it claims that the stolen painting was spotted hanging on the wall in Zelensky’s office in a video that the Ukrainian president posted of himself in mid-April – a video that was later deleted. The fake news report even features the video supposedly deleted by Zelensky, where you can, indeed, see the stolen painting behind him.
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