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Putinburger 2.0: Kremlin media pass off spoof video as pro-Putin Berlin cafe advert
“Moskovsky Komsomolets” published an article called “Advert for cafe with pancakes “from Putin” went viral in Germany,” which said:
“An advert for the Russian cafe Pogrebok in Berlin has gone viral on the Internet, with references to the Mikhail Gorbachev Pizza Hut commercial and with a dystopian twist showing how winter will end thanks to the efforts of the current Scholz-Baerbock federal government, the Signal channel reports.
The video conveys, as it were, the atmosphere of the coming European winter. According to the depicted scenario, Putin did not just beat everyone but was referred to as the Chancellor of Europe on German television. At the same time, the diners of the establishment suffering from winter chill don't just drink and eat (kvass and pancakes) but argue about the chancellor's role in history.
“He's the one who fired our Scholz!”, “Europe is humiliated!”, “But we don't supply weapons to anyone anymore,” the channel quotes the remarks of the characters shown in the video.
But, as is common in commercials, the emotional impact is followed by actual product details: “thanks to Putin, Berliners can eat delicious pancakes and drink authentic kvass from Pogrebok.”
RIA FAN, a publication associated with Prigozhin's “troll factory,” had made a similar report in an article entitled “A German café releases advert showing its patrons drinking to Putin.”
In reality, there is no Pogrebok cafe in Berlin. The video is a spoof of the famous 1997 Pizza Hut commercial starring Mikhail Gorbachev. Some of the lines of the cold-bitten characters, sitting in the cafe in frosty winter clothes and arguing about Putin, exactly repeat the phrases from the Pizza Hut adverts (“thanks to him we have freedom”), others draw an absurd picture of the future of Germany (“he fired our Scholz,” “I have not had a shower for six months,” “but we no longer supply weapons to anyone”). In the finale, everyone drinks to Putin, because thanks to him they have Russian pancakes and kvass. Putin himself, unlike Gorbachev in the original advert, does not appear in the frame, but cafe customers can see him on the screen of a tiny pocket TV. His image is titled “Kanzler von Europa”.
The commercial is clearly not of German origin. The actors speak German but their speech is drowned out by Russian translation, although the video is subtitled in German for some reason. No version without Russian translation is available online. The Ukrainian news outlet StopFake identified one of the actors as a man registered on several Russian websites, offering tutoring services.
The video was posted no the YouTube channel Vening, which publishes exclusively pro-Kremlin content. The video's characterization as “viral” is clearly the work of pro-Kremlin propaganda: in came out on November 21 and has garnered only 3,100 views in three days. The fact that it was intended for the German audience is hard to believe, given the absence of a version without Russian translation.
Judging by the fact that RIA FAN reported the “advert” on the day it first appeared on YouTube, it is likely that the “troll factory” had been involved in filming the video.
In October 2017, RT-owned agency Ruptly ran a story about a New York restaurant listing on its menu a 1,952g special burger (because Putin was born in 1952) in honor of Putin's birthday. The story, which was shown on the Russian federal TV channels, turned out to be a fake; no “Putinburger” ever existed.