A screenshot of a fabricated CNN Twitter post that reports on what it says is a former primary school teacher travelling through a besieged Ukrainian city to look for unaccompanied children has been interpreted as authentic by some on social media.
Examples of the screenshot can be seen on Facebook here and on Twitter here, where it has been liked more than 7,000 times.
The screenshot, which purports to be from the official CNN account, includes a selfie of a male who is identified as “Ivian Kotchinski” and suggests he has been travelling through the city of Kharkiv, taking care of abandoned children.
“Locals have started calling him ‘the Kharkiv Kid finder’ for his seemingly supernatural ability to find young boys who don’t have anybody protecting them,” the post adds.
However, a spokesperson for CNN told Reuters that the screenshot and tweet were fake.
“That is a fabricated post and is not affiliated with CNN in any way,” the spokesperson said.
Reuters was unable to find any evidence that such a tweet was posted from official CNN social media accounts.
Moreover, the picture of the man in the fabricated CNN post appears to be Vaush (real name Ian Kochinski), an American YouTuber and streamer who debates current affairs and politics on his channels (twitter.com/VaushV).
Kochinski is a self-described “libertarian socialist” and “anti-fascist” (www.youtube.com/c/Vaush/about), and he has posted a wealth of content expressing disapproval of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
There is no evidence, based on his recent streams, that Kochinski is in Kharkiv (www.vaush.gg/).
In recent weeks, Reuters has published several fact checks about claims misrepresenting CNN (here, here and here), including one based on a fabricated tweet (here).
VERDICT
False. CNN did not tweet or publish a story about a “Kharkiv kid finder”.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.