An online post claiming a Russian newspaper had reported that former US President Barack Obama was “afraid to ask questions” of his Philippine counterpart Rodrigo Duterte is fake news.
The fabricated post, published May 17 by Facebook page President Duterte Society – Visayas Chapter, was an open letter to Duterte by a man supposedly from Russia. He claimed there was a story in a Russian paper that day about “how Obama is afraid asking you a questions (sic), because he knows that your replies are brilliant.”
Two photos accompanied the post: a blurry selfie of a man with the supposed newspaper article, and a closeup of an inset of Duterte, also captioned in Russian.
VERA Files Fact Check, with translation help from Ukranian fact-checker VoxUkraine, found the online post to be untrue.
The article is actually almost three years old: a Sept. 7, 2016 story by free Russian newspaper Metro, headlined, “Scandal. How Barack Obama took offense at the President of the Philippines.”
The story does not bear out President Duterte Society – Visayas Chapter’s claim. It did not say Obama was “afraid” to ask Duterte questions but instead reported that the then-US president refused to meet with his counterpart after he called him a “son of a whore,” shortly before an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit that year.
The fake post was published a day after the Duterte administration recalled the Philippine ambassador and several other diplomats from their posts in Canada in reaction to a six-year long row over Canadian trash shipped to the country. Canada has since agreed to take back the tons of waste it sent in 2013 and 2014.
The fake post has been shared over 830 times and has received more than 1,400 reactions and over 130 comments.
President Duterte Society – Visayas Chapter was created on June 7, 2015.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
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