A set of two photos of a beautiful house in a forest is being spread on social media as the residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin’s home in Sochi, Russia,” reads the caption of such a Facebook post.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found the allegation along with the photos to be misleading. The structure seen in the photos is a concept design by the Russian architect Roman Vlasov, and not a real house.
The archived versions of the posts can be seen here and here.
AFWA investigation
Using Google’s reverse image search, we found the same photos posted in various posts on Roman Vlasov’s Instagram page. The photos were first posted by the architect on January 25, 2021.
The caption says: ‘PUTIN HOUSE or a story about what his villa might look like’. In his post, Vlasov also used hashtags like #design and #concept, indicating that the building is not real.
In another post on March 28, he also wrote that the creation could be purchased as a non-fungible token (NFT). In this post, he tagged ‘withfoundation’, an online platform to ‘create, explore and collect digital art NFTs’.
NFT is a unit of data on a digital ledger where each NFT can represent a unique digital item. NFTs can represent digital files such as art, audio, videos, items in video games, and other forms of creative work.
A further search on social media revealed that some verified Twitter handles also made it clear that the photos are a 3D concept of Vlasov. One such tweet by American journalist Yashar Ali can be seen below.
This is not a real house.
This is a draft design by Vlasov based on what he thinks Putin’s house would look like. https://t.co/sr1UkTkoYp
– Yashar Ali (@yashar) 5 April 2021
Designboom, an online magazine for architecture, also featured the viral images as a representation of Vlasov.
On January 19, 2021, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny released drone footage of a suspected billion-dollar mansion, claiming it was secretly built by Putin with illegal funds, near the Russian Black Sea. However, the viral photos do not look like the ones Navalny shared.
The video shared by Navalny can be seen below.
Therefore, it is clear that the photographs distributed are only a draft design by the Russian architect Roman Vlasov, and not genuine.
ClaimPhotos of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence in Sochi, Russia.ClosureThese photos are a draft design only by the Russian architect Roman Vlasov and not genuine.
JHOOTH BOLE KAUVA KAATE
The number of crows determines the intensity of the lie.
- 1 Crow: Half true
- 2 crows: mostly lies
- 3 crows: absolutely false
