On October 24-25th, Georgian-speaking Facebook users (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) published a video of Joe Biden with the logo of the pro-Kremlin “Alt-Info TV.” The same video without Alt-Info’s logo was also distributed on the Facebook page with the caption “World Politics” (1, 2). The video is dubbed in Georgian, making it impossible to hear the original statement. According to the audio, Biden admits that the sanctions did not damage Russia, that Russian profits increased, and the ruble strengthened against the dollar.
The video was also published on the Tik-Tok account “altinfo5,” and it was also shared by Alt-Info’s Facebook pages, although these posts have now been deleted.
The published posts contain elements of video manipulation, as the Georgian voiceover for Biden’s video is inauthentic and has no connection with the content of the original statement. In fact, in his speech, Joe Biden talked about the importance of technology to the American economy and the creation of new jobs. Biden did not mention Russia or sanctions at all.
The voiceover attached to the video circulating on Facebook is fake. The original video was published on the White House YouTube channel on October 6th. Biden was at an event for the technology company IBM in New York’s Hudson Valley. In his speech, he talked about the jobs already created in the manufacturing sector, as well as the creation of new jobs and the importance of new technologies to the American economy. In this speech, Biden touched on a number of issues, such as artificial intelligence, cyber security, and quantum computing. Notably, Russia and the sanctions imposed on it were not among these issues.
In the first second of the video published with the logo of Alt-Info, the word “Better” can be heard, this word is mentioned several times in the original video, and the exact passage can be found by observing the movements and gestures of Biden’s hands. In his speech, Biden said: “More is going to change for the better in the next ten years than happened in the last 40 years.” Biden notes that the next ten years will bring significant changes to the whole world, and thanks to innovations in this process, America is in a favourable position, which will help it “own” the second quarter of the 21st century.
A statement by Biden, where he stresses the ineffectiveness of sanctions and the growth of the Russian economy, cannot be found in open sources and media outlets either. On September 30th, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, announced that the United States, together with its partners, would impose new sanctions on Russia, which would affect those “individuals and entities — inside and outside of Russia — that provide political or economic support to illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory.” Along with the sanctions, the US will allocate an additional 12 billion to help Ukraine.
The article has been written in the framework of Facebook’s fact-checking program. You can read more about the restrictions that Facebook may impose based on this article via this link. You can find information about appealing or editing our assessment via this link.
Read detailed instructions for editing the article.
Read detailed appeal instructions
