It Is Not True that Ukrainian Media Doctored Recordings of Zelenskyy’s UN Address

Screenshot from the video in the post

The post claiming that Ukrainian media with manipulation of a video wanted to present greater attendance of Zelenskyy’s address at the UN is not true. More precisely, the original video of the Ukrainian media was doctored by a well-known Russian propagandist

We are fact-checking a post on the social network Facebook (screenshot here) sharing a video from the address of Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the UN, claiming the following:

21.09.2023 Ukrainian media edited Zelenskyy’s address at the UN so that it would look like there was greater audience. They forgot to fix Zelenskyy himself sitting in the audience. See it at 0:14.

When one watches the video, it can be easily seen that it shows Zelenskyy talking, but at the 14th second, while he is still talking, one can also see him sitting in the audience.

It is disinformation that Ukrainian media wanted to present, by doctoring the video, greater attendance of Zelenskyy’s address at the UN than the real number and that they were “caught”, by publishing inserts of Zelenskyy himself sitting in the audience during his address. The Ukrainian media have denied this and there is an entire history of how the disinformation came about and spread as part of the Russian propaganda.

More specifically, one of the Ukrainian media, whose logo was also used in the post with the video fact-checked, published a rebuttal with the headline: ”Announcement by Edini Novini about the marathon of fake information about the changes in the live broadcast of the address of the President of Ukraine at the UN”.

Manipulation by the pro-Russian propagandist Anatoly Shariy
The rebuttal states that on 21st September pro-Russian sources started to spread false information about alleged changes in the address of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the UN.

The Edini Novini team replied that this information was false and appealed to journalist associations and authors of digital content to stand up against this Russian fake narrative. The source of the fake video was the pro-Russian propagandist Anatoly Shariy who published the altered video on his Telegram channel. Russian sites NTV, Reporter, Channel 1, Federal Press and other similar sources published the same video, thereby distorting the truth in their notorious style. Unfortunately, the dissemination of this disinformation was supported by some Ukrainian and European sources as well, including news agencies, Telegram channels, and individuals. All interested parties can assure themselves that the information and the video itself is untrue. Another indicator of the false video is the inconsistency of the visual markers. “Marathon channels use additional graphic elements, such as Geo-header, that do not exist on the fake video. In addition, during the broadcast, the President’s address was simultaneously translated by another presenter, something that can be easily checked”, claims Media 1 plus 1.

The fake video used in the fragment of Zelenskyy’s address is published on the YouTube channel of TSN, however, the specific video fragment does not contain another recording of the hall except the President’s address from the floor.

Please bear in mind that the original video does not have the graphic logo of 1+1 Marathon, which was added in the upper right corner by the authors of the fake video, states the rebuttal. This is not the first time Russian or pro-Russian sources to used branding of popular Ukrainian television channels to manipulate the audience. The editors of Edini Novini are demanding an inquiry of the reasons for spreading fake news in the Ukrainian information area and draw their attention to the lack of fact-checking in some Ukrainian media, Telegram channels and individuals. It is important for the authors of such posts to publicly acknowledge their failure and inform their readers that the published information was false, adds the announcement of Media 1 plus 1.

The Massive Communication Institute published that propagandists were falsely claiming that the video from Zelenskyy’s address was altered in the live broadcast of Ukrainian media. Due to all of the above-noted facts we assess the fact-checked post as untrue.

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