Digitally altered image shared as recent picture of Joe Biden eating ice cream in Ukraine - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
February 22, 2023
A photo is being shared on social media claiming it is a recent picture showing US President Joe Biden eating ice cream in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. The post claims that the picture was taken during Joe Biden’s recent visit to war-torn Ukraine. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Recent picture of US President Joe Biden having ice cream in Ukraine’s capital city Kyiv.
Fact: The post shared a digitally altered image created by merging a picture of Kyiv’s street food centre and an old image of Joe Biden taken while he was eating ice cream during his visit to Ohio in May 2021. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, a similar photo was found published on the ‘Reuters’ in May 2021. But the background in the original photo does not show a Ukrainian street food centre as seen in the photo shared in the post. The description of the photo states, “U.S. President Joe Biden eats an ice-cream during a visit to Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., May 27, 2021.”  So, it can be confirmed that the photo was taken in May 2021, before the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.
When we searched for the details of the background picture in the digitally-altered photo, we found that the background photo shows the Kyivska Perepichka street food centre in Kyiv, Ukraine. More details of this street food center in Kyiv can be seen here and here. A few pictures taken during US President Joe Biden’s recent visit to Ukraine can be seen here.
To sum it up, a digitally-altered image was shared as a recent picture of Joe Biden having ice cream in Ukraine.