LOGIN DASHBOARD

    Explainers

    2 MIN READ

    Some claims in Putin memes circulating in Nepal are false

    Deepak Adhikari, Record Nepal, October 7, 2020, Kathmandu

    Some claims in Putin memes circulating in Nepal are false

      Share this article

    At least two memes are circulating on social media in Nepal praising Russian President Vladimir Putin for granting audience to a visually-impaired Russian teenager. Some of the claims made in the memes are false.

    (The Record)

    Over the past few days, Nepali Facebook users have been sharing memes showing a blind Russian teenager meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin. The memes posted by Nepali users claim that Putin met the girl within 24 hours after she had expressed her desire to meet the president.

    On October 4, a Facebook user Dharam Prakas Giri, who has 1,114 followers on the social media platform, posted the following status along with the photo of the young woman with Putin.

    “After Russian President Putin saw a video on social media in which a 17-year-old blind Russian woman Regina Parpieva wanted to meet him, Putin instructed his aides to arrange a meeting with her within 24 hours. If this had happened in our country, they would instead order her arrest and put her in jail.”

    Former secretary of the Ministry of Water Supply, Bhim Upadhyaya, who has more than 138,000 followers on Facebook, also shared Giri’s status and photo. He replaced the last sentence in Giri’s status with the following: “A good leader is someone who cares about every one of his people.” His post has been shared 329 times on Facebook. The same meme has also been shared by Routines of Nepal Banda. The Facebook page (not to be confused with the popular Routine of Nepal banda) posts news and information and has more than 88,000 followers. It has also been shared on the Facebook page of a news site called Sajal Sandesh.

    Fact check

    South Asia Check investigated the memes, which are widely circulating among Nepali Facebook users. We found that the meeting between Putin and the girl had indeed taken place, but some of the claims made in the meme are false.

    According to the Russian news agency RT, Parpieva, a swimmer who suffers from a rare condition called Devic’s disease which causes blindness among other things, and Putin met in Moscow on December 21, 2018. At the time she also interviewed Putin. But the memes circulating in the Nepali social mediasphere falsely claim that she was invited to the meeting within 24 hours of the video in which she expresses her desire to meet the Russian president being posted on social media. The memes also falsely claimed Putin saw the video after it was shared on social media.

    On December 5, 2018, two weeks before the meeting in Moscow, President Putin had met with her at a charity event of the International Volunteer Forum. During the meeting, Putin promised to fulfill the 17-year-old’s dream of becoming a journalist. According to the photo agency Alamy, Parpieva was participating in Dream with Me, a charity supported by Putin. With the help of RT and other news agencies, she was allowed to interview the Russian president, which fulfilled her dream to be a journalist. The memes’ claims that she touched Putin before saying goodbye turned out to be accurate.

    *Note: The article has been revised to clarify the confusion over two Facebook accounts with very similar names.

    ::::::::



    author bio photo

    Deepak Adhikari  Deepak Adhikari is the editor of South Asia Check, a fact-checking organization.

      



    author bio photo

    Record Nepal  We are an independent digital publication based in Kathmandu, Nepal. Our stories examine politics, the economy, society, and culture. We look into events both current and past, offering depth, analysis, and perspective. Explore our features, explainers, long reads, multimedia stories, and podcasts. There’s something here for everyone.

            



    Comments

    Get the best of

    the Record

    Previous Next

    YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

    Perspectives

    6 min read

    Province 2 and Sudurpaschim show how federalism can bring about political stability

    Sovit Subedi - February 16, 2021

    Federalism appears to be working in exactly the two places—with distinct regional identities—where it was most likely to work.

    Explainers

    9 min read

    Everything you need to know before you go vote

    Sajeet M. Rajbhandari - May 12, 2022

    Here’s a handy list of things to keep in mind, especially for first-time voters, while voting in the 2022 local election on Friday, May 13. 

    COVID19

    Features

    4 min read

    Are Covid19 patients getting the care they deserve?

    The Record - May 23, 2020

    Nepal’s first three Covid19 deaths could have been avoided with timely ambulance services and adequate medical care

    COVID19

    Perspectives

    6 min read

    Nepal’s federal success

    Sovit Subedi - April 30, 2020

    Decentralised governance has helped abate the Covid19 crisis

    Features

    8 min read

    Rethinking Kathmandu

    Prashanta Khanal - June 19, 2020

    What the city’s planners can learn from Jane Jacobs

    COVID19

    Features

    6 min read

    Tension runs high in Nepal’s overcrowded prisons after first inmate dies of Covid-19

    Bhadra Sharma - September 2, 2020

    Nepal’s prison system is inadequately equipped to deal with mounting coronavirus cases

    Features

    4 min read

    Twenty-five years of South Asian storytelling

    Sajeet M. Rajbhandari - April 28, 2022

    For a quarter of a century, Film South Asia has been presenting the best documentaries the region has to offer, all while bringing the region and its peoples together.

    Features

    4 min read

    Art in the time of Covid-19: even more visual artists

    Record Nepal - April 2, 2021

    The Record is back with its mini-series of artists and the projects they worked on during the lockdown and the pandemic.

    • About
    • Contributors
    • Jobs
    • Contact

    CONNECT WITH US

    © Copyright the Record | All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy