On July 4, 2023, Facebook user Nona Sharabidze published a photo collage consisting of photos of the President of Russia, the King of Sweden, and the former President of Estonia. Vladimir Putin is sitting on a horse and wearing military print clothes. Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf wears a reindeer antler hat, while former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves wears a see-through suit with glittering wings and a Pride brooch.
Russian-language Facebook accounts have been distributing similar photo collages since 2016 (1, 2); however, in their version, instead of Vladimir Putin, the photo of the President of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, is used, in which he is wearing an armor.
The disseminated posts contain photo manipulations. In fact, the photo taken at the Pride does not depict the former President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, but an Argentinian comedian. The photo of the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, is altered. In the original version, he is not wearing a cap of deer antlers.
The viral collage featuring photo manipulations of the former President of Estonia and the king of Sweden against the backdrop of Vladimir Putin’s military-style clothing is aimed at discrediting and mocking European leaders.
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The photo does not depict the former President of Estonia
In fact, the disseminated photo was taken at the 2011 Buenos Aires Pride in Argentina. The photo shows not the former President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, but Carlos Lopez, a comedian and one of the hosts of the Argentinian show Bendita. Lopez died in 2021.
Although the man in the photo resembles the former President of Estonia, their distinguishing features are also easy to spot. For example, Ilves has an enlarged earlobe, and Carlos Lopez has a separated earlobe.
In 2012, a few months after Pride, the photo started circulating as a meme on Latin American social networks. In May 2015, it appeared on the website RusVesna.su as an illustration of an article about artists representing the Ukrainian LGBTQ+ community.
The DFRLab of the Atlantic Council writes about how the photo started to be attributed to the former President of Estonia and how it was used to spread homophobic and anti-Western rhetoric. The article notes that the first version of the meme was shared on Twitter in 2015 by a Russian-language account. It is worth noting that the meme was also shown in the satirical program of the Kremlin channel, NTV, when discussing the statement of Toomas Hendrik Ilves, in which he said that if Russia attacks Estonia, it may lose Omsk, Tomsk, and St. Petersburg.
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A deer antler hat has been added to the photo of the King of Sweden using computer software.
As for the second photo, it indeed shows the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, although in the original photo, he is not wearing a deer antler hat.
Photo search engine TinEye tracked down the earliest published version of the photograph on the Internet, in which the king of Sweden wears a black hat.
The original photo was taken in 2002 during the annual royal hunt for the elk (aka moose). Other photos taken during the annual hunt can also be found on commercial visual materials platforms, all showing King Carl XVI Gustaf wearing a black hat.
It is worth noting that there are many altered photos of King Carl XVI Gustaf on the Internet, in which he wears various hats of strange visuals:
About the Source
Facebook user Nona Sharabidze regularly spreads false information and Kremlin narratives of anti-Western content. “Myth Detector” has repeatedly debunked the disinformation spread by Sharabidze in the past.
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