MARY ALEXANDER • 8 APRIL 2024

Russian president Vladimir Putin recently “opened an ancient box revealing that Jesus was black”.

At least, that’s the claim circulating on social media in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and elsewhere since just before the Easter holidays of late March 2024.*

The claim includes a video divided into three frames. At top is footage of Putin at a table with uniformed men, opening an ornate golden box. Inside we briefly see a Russian Orthodox religious artwork known as an icon.

The frame at bottom left shows a similar artwork, of a dark-skinned Jesus, and at bottom right is a photo of Putin pointing his finger.

The video starts with a machine-generated voice: “Putin reveals to the world a secret that European has been hiding from African for millennium, that Jesus was black.” A millennium is 1,000 years.

The clip then cuts to a second section headed with the text “Russia says Jesus was black with proof.” A more human voice says Russia has “opened its cellars” to “reveal biblical icons featuring darker-skinned figures”. The footage shows paintings in what seems to be a museum.

Then, one by one, nine artworks of people from Christian tradition are flashed on screen. All are darker than the common western image of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus.

The voice adds that “Americans turned the bible white”, but “Russians didn’t get the message”.

The claim can also be seen here, here and here.

It’s worth noting that a month ago the US-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies said it had found, since 2022, a fourfold increase in false information spread across online networks in Africa. Most of the disinformation was from Russia.

Is the video really evidence that Putin has “opened an ancient box revealing Jesus was black” and that Russia “says Jesus was black with proof”?

Putin gives icon copies to military in occupied Ukraine

The footage of Putin includes the logo of the Daily Mail, a UK-based tabloid. So we searched the Daily Mail’s YouTube channel using the keywords “Putin icon”. This led us to the original video, posted a year ago in April 2023.

Its description reads: “Vladimir Putin visits illegally annexed Kherson, Ukraine”.

According to several news reports based on a Kremlin press release, Putin made a surprise visit to the Russia-occupied Kherson region of southern Ukraine on 18 April 2023.

There he held a meeting with Russian military commanders and presented them with copies of Russian religious icons.

Russia’s state-owned Tass news service reports that the copies were bought from a private collector in the USA. The original icons had belonged to Pyotr Vannovsky, Russia’s minister of war in the late 1800s.

There are no reports that Putin “revealed that Jesus was black” during his Kherson visit. And the “ancient box” he is seen opening in the viral video is actually the covering of a relatively new icon replica, bought from the USA.

The icon image below the footage of Putin is unrelated to his gifts. A reverse image search shows it is a 17th-century artwork in the permanent collection of the Tomsk Regional Art Museum in central Russia.

Video of 2011 exhibition

The footage in the second part of the viral video is not “proof” that Russia “recently” opened its “cellars” to reveal that Jesus was black.

The footage is more than 12 years old. It’s not recent. It shows an exhibition of 40 Russian icons from the 1400s to the 1900s held at the Castel Sant’Angelo museum in Rome, Italy in September 2011. One report has it that the works were hidden during the 1917 Russian Revolution to “protect them from anti-religious destruction”.

Recent art claimed to be ‘ancient’

And while the nine artworks flashed across the screen are in an icon style, not all of them are Russian or particularly old.

One (here) is by contemporary Norwegian artist Ove Svele, two (here and here) by contemporary US artist Robert Lentz, and another (here) celebrates the Sudan-born Catholic saint Josephine Bakhita, who died in 1947 and was canonised in 2000. The rest – here, here, here, here, here and here – have been online for years.

The idea that Jesus and other biblical figures were black isn’t new. And the claim ignores the rich artistic traditions of Christianity’s many branches. These include the art of the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which tradition holds was established in the first century of the common era and has been a formal church for 1,700 years.

Edited version published by Africa Check on 12 April 2024.

* Some claims posted on Facebook and Instagram may have been deleted by users after being rated via Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program.

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