FACT CHECK: Economist Cover Of Vladimir Putin And Joe Biden Is Fake

Elias Atienza | Senior Reporter
An image shared on Facebook claims to show Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden on the cover of The Economist.

Verdict: False
The Economist did not publish this cover of Putin and Biden.

Fact Check:

Putin threatened to arm North Korea with weapons if Europe, the U.S. and other Western nations continued to arm Ukraine, according to CNN. This comes after Putin visited the reclusive nation, the outlet reported.

Social media users are claiming to show a cover of The Economist with Putin and Biden playing chess with a nuclear warhead above them. The cover’s title reads, “Nuclear war is inevitable.”

This claim is false. Check Your Fact reviewed The Economist’s website and did not find any such cover on it. A search of the Economist’s available covers also did not yield any results. (RELATED: X Video Purporting To Show Man Confronting Jill Biden On ‘The View’ Is Satirical)

Check Your Fact also reviewed The Economist’s social media accounts, such as X and Instagram, neither of which feature any results for the alleged cover. Check Your Fact also conducted a wider internet search for the alleged cover. This search did not yield any results beyond other fact-checkers, such as Reuters and Logically Facts, debunking the claim.

A reverse image search found that the image of Putin and Biden playing chess was first published on Deviant Art by an artist known as “cards” in 2017. There is no Economist imagery on this page.

An Economist spokesperson told Reuters that the cover was not created by the outlet.

Elias Atienza

Senior Reporter
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