Altered Video of Dancing Zelenskyy Spreads on Social Networks in North Macedonia’s Surroundings

Photo: Screenshot from the altered video

Since the beginning of the year, a new deepfake video of Zelenskyy dancing in a red traditional costume has spread on social networks. The video of the President of Ukraine is shared on Facebook and TikTok. The video, however, is a fabricated clip from 2020, showing a Russian dancer on some kind of a celebration

Ukraine’s President, Volodymir Zelenskyy, is yet again the target of a deepfake video, in which he is allegedly dancing in a red exotic costume. The video has spread on the social networks Facebook and TikTok in the countries around North Macedonia during the New Year holidays.

The Facebook post states the following:

They could not have found a better person to finish off hisr country.

Several foreign fact-checkers have analyzed this video and assessed it as altered. It is a matter of time before it starts circulating our social networks. This video, like others checked by Truthmeter, is a part of the narrative mocking the Ukrainian President as a person incapable of performing his duties. Similar to the previous fact-checks, this video was altered with deepfake technology. This is how it is done:

To start with, the original video can be seen released on 16 October 2020 on TikTok, which is two years before the publishing of the video which is the subject of our analysis. A copy of the original video can also be found on Instagram. According to fact-checkers from the region and from Europe, the identity of the dancer is still unknown.

As can be seen from the photographs above – one photograph is made from the original video, while the other is from the altered video – the clothes, audience, and body positioning are the same. Only the face of the dancer is altered to resemble Zelenskyy. In addition, both videos have different music.

An additional check on whether the video was altered can be made through the online tool for checking videos “Deepware” – which is a technology for detecting artificial manipulation of a video i.e., its contents and audio components.

On this link, one can see the analysis of the altered video. The four models that performed the analysis are shown in the picture. One can see that the video was altered, judging by the parameters. All four models detect some kind of change. The last two (the third and the fourth) report suspiciousness from 68 to 59 percent.

One of the reasons why Zelenskyy is frequently a target of such videos, especially related to dancing, is because before becoming president, he was a comedian and part of the show business. Previously he took part in the show ”Dancing with the Stars” (in 2006), and made a satirical video where he first dances in Kozak traditional costume, then he rips it off and continues to dance in high heels and tight leather attire – similar to the spot of Beyonce’s hit song “Single ladies”. So, if someone has seen him dancing in real videos, he/she can easily believe if a manipulative video is spread on the social networks, just like this one.

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