Following a meeting between Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Russian President Vladimir Putin, on December 25, the Russian-language page Хвиля posted a photo showing Putin and Fico kissing. The description of the post reads: “Putin bid farewell to Slovak Prime Minister Fico.
The photo of Putin and Fico circulating on social media is generated by artificial intelligence. Although Fico did visit Moscow to meet with Putin, the circulated image is AI-generated and was created using a photo from a previous meeting in 2016, where they are shaking hands.
The photo of Putin and Fico was posted on a Russian-language page, but a Slovak page also published a video of Fico and Putin shaking hands and then kissing on the lips. The image circulated on the Russian page was likely cropped from this very video.
The photo, based on which the image of Putin and Robert Fico kissing has been generated by using AI, was actually taken in 2016 and has nothing to do with the meeting held a week ago. The leaders of Russia and Slovakia met on December 22, and it is worth noting that they were dressed in different clothes from those shown in the generated image. Additionally, it can be clearly seen that Vladimir Putin wore a maroon tie in the meeting, while in the circulated image on social media, the color of the tie is dark blue.

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The photo shows flaws that confirm it was generated by artificial intelligence. For example, Vladimir Putin’s fingers look asymmetrical – a flaw often found in AI-generated images.
Myth Detector also verified the photo using Truemedia, a tool that identifies visuals generated with artificial intelligence and deepfake technology. This tool confirmed that the image of Putin and Fico kissing was AI-generated.
There is also video footage of the meeting between Fico and Putin available online. However, the kissing scene does not appear in any official sources. The meeting footage was published on the Kremlin’s official Telegram channel too.

Goga Gogashvili
Myth Detector Lab
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