2019 video shared as recent visuals of Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin holding face-to-face peace talks to end the war - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 21, 2022
A video is being shared on social media claiming it as recent visuals of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin holding face-to-face peace talks to end the war. Sharing the video, this post claims that Volodymyr Zelensky had accepted Ukraine’s defeat in the ongoing war with Russia. The video shows Zelensky and Putin joining in a round table conference held along with French President Emmanuel Macron and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Recent video of the face-to-face peace talks held between Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Fact: The video shared in the post shows the old visuals of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s first-ever meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Paris Summit 2019. As of now, Vladimir Putin did not have any face-to-face peace talks with Volodymyr Zelensky to end the war. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
On reverse image search of the screenshots in the video, a video with similar visuals was found published by the ‘AFP News Agency’ on 09 December 2019. The description of the video states, “Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky have met for the first time ever at a summit in Paris seen as a critical opportunity to take steps to end five years of conflict in eastern Ukraine”.
Reporting the same, several other news websites published articles and videos in December 2019. They can be seen here, here, and here. According to these news reports, both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky had bilateral talks during the Paris Summit 2019 to end five years of conflict in the east of Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron and then German Chancellor Angela Merkel were also present during this bilateral meeting held between Russia and Ukraine Presidents.
Amid the ongoing conflict with Russia, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has been proposing a direct face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war. After more than 25 days of the war, Vladimir Putin has reportedly agreed to have direct face-to-face peace talks with Volodymyr Zelensky, as per some reports. But as of now, they did not finalize any specific date for this meeting.
To sum it up, the 2019 video is shared as recent visuals of Zelensky and Putin holding a face-to-face meeting to end the Russia-Ukraine war.