Fact Check: Has Russian President Vladimir Putin embraced Buddhism?

Two images which show Russian President Vladimir Putin embracing Buddhism have gone viral on the social media.

The images show President wearing a Buddhist monk's attire and claim that he has embraced Buddhism. Putin has been in the news due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

The question now is whether these images that have gone viral are true or false. On running a reverse image search on the viral photos, we found a Facebook post from March 18.

The post is by a group called 'AI CREATIVES THAILAND.' The post has four images, which includes the two viral photos of Putin and two images of US President Joe Biden. In the images both the leaders can be seen dressed as Buddhist monks.

The post also clarifies that the images are not real and are generated by the AI tool, Midjourney.

The person who created the post identified himself as a digital creator, who has shared several such images created by AI.

Midjourney is an AI-powered tool, which creates realistic images suitable to the prompts given by users.

In the recent past several such AI-generated images have gone viral. Recently similar images of Donald Trump being arrested or his mug-shot being taken have gone viral on the social media. Another image that had gone viral was that of US President Joe Biden who can be seen eating an ice-cream outside a parlour in Ukraine. Biden had made an unannounced trip to war-torn Ukraine. However it was later on found that the image of him eating an ice-cream was AI-generated. While sharing the image, a user had said, 'this cool picture of President Biden enjoying an ice-cream cone, a chocolate one in Kyiv, Ukraine.'

It was found that these were AI-generated images and the tool has become quite a hit among many.

Hence, it can be concluded that the image of Putin sporting a Buddhist monk's attire and the fact that he had embraced Buddhism is fake.