Economist Apocalypse

Pro-Kremlin sources are sharing a fabricated cover and quote from The Economist (NewsGuard Trust Score: 100/100) indicating that the influential U.K. weekly magazine stated that the U.S. has brought the world to the brink of global war.

The claim was pushed after U.S. President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to use American long-range missiles for strikes inside Russia.
A closer look: The fabricated cover includes the word “APOCALYPSE,” along with an image of Trump and Putin face to face, and with missiles on an all-red background.

Referring to the cover, misinformation sources on X, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr declared: “‘Allowing missile strikes deep into Russia is the beginning of World War III,’ warns the iconic prophetic magazine The Economist.”
Telegram channel @GolosMordora, which is known to be affiliated with Russian intelligence services, and The Pravda network (Trust Score: 7.5/100), a network of more than 80 anonymously run sites amplifying pro-Kremlin disinformation in dozens of languages, also advanced the claim in English and Russian.
Actually: The Economist did not publish such a cover or describe Biden’s Ukrainian arms decision as “the beginning of World War III.”

The cover, which does not appear on The Economist’s website, contains inconsistencies and signs of fabrication: It does not have a date, as Economist covers do, and it contains spelling and grammatical mistakes. (One article is listed on the cover as “America’s pumbed-up [sic] economy.”)