Framed by Russian propaganda din, a picture is emblazoned on a website: "Murnau, Haus auf dem Hügel", allegedly an oil painting measuring 42 by 56 centimeters, is said to have been created in 1909 by none other than Kandinsky, the grand master of abstraction.

Now the canvas described in this way is to be sold online - to support Russia's war in Ukraine.

Lies upon lies pile up the texts of the online presence of an ominous organization called Terricon, in which reality is inverted and Ukraine is recast as an aggressor led by radicals.

In order to counter this with all violence, one should acquire the work from a private collection under the heading "Art for victory", with crypto money, circumventing all sanctions: as a non-fungible token.

It stands to reason that the pro-Russian side is trying what the Ukrainian side has already strengthened with numerous crypto fundraisers and is clamoring for blockchain trade regulation.

But NFT, unique virtual title deeds, are only worth something if the real works to which they refer are also worth something.

Nothing but untruths

So scans of letterheaded reports from the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow are available for download, dated 2003.

They should vouch for the authenticity.

Sotheby's, according to the website, has valued the painting at "ten million euros".

Can you believe it?

Is not it.

Asked at the auction house, the answer is: Sotheby's does not give estimates for works that the house has not physically examined - and therefore not for this one either.

Therefore, they demand the deletion of the reference on the website.

Good luck with that, because the operators, who only operate with a network address and claim to be an association of militia officers, crypto investors, Californian IT specialists and workers “from the far north”, hardly seem legally tangible.

In the Tretyakov Gallery, meanwhile, a specialist explains on request: The picture in question is “101 percent” a fake.

The fake certificate probably comes from the boom times around the turn of the millennium, when corrupt employees of the gallery made a little extra money with proof of authenticity for fakes - which was exposed and led to dismissals.

This is also what “The Art Newspaper” speculates.

It almost goes without saying that in Kandinsky's catalog raisonné among the pictures that the avant-gardist created in Murnau, Bavaria, there is not one that is positioned for the war of aggression.

However, one can take the name of the artist from the directory – and the fraudsters could have gone to at least that much trouble.

Wassily Kandinsky.

Not Vladimir as he is called on the website.

Vladimir, this is someone else.

Greetings from Freud.