In September 2023, reports appeared in the media and social networks that on Ukrainian television the broadcast of the speech of the President of Ukraine at the UN General Assembly was allegedly edited so that the hall seemed full, but they made a mistake: it turned out as if Zelensky was listening to his own speech. We have verified the authenticity of the viral video.
Vladimir Zelensky spoke delivering a speech at the 78th UN General Assembly in New York on September 19, 2023. Two days later, on September 21, reports appeared in many Russian media and Telegram channels that a video of the speech of the President of Ukraine was allegedly deliberately incorrectly edited on Ukrainian television. As evidence, a 26-second recording with the logo of the “1 + 1” channel is provided, where at the 14th second Zelensky is visible sitting in the hall, allegedly listening to his own speech. Many Russian publications explained the alleged manipulation by the fact that the Ukrainian TV channel wanted to demonstrate: a full room had gathered to listen to the politician.
The supposed miracles of editing were reported on Ukrainian television “Channel One", "News", "NTV", "Ren-TV", RT, "Russian newspaper", "Gazeta.ru", "RIA Novosti», TASS, Lenta.ru, "Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Moskovsky Komsomolets", "News", "Ukraine.ru", "Constantinople", Readovka, "Reedus", "Regnum", Life, Ura.ru, "Star", News.ru, "Moscow region today", RIAMO, "Nationwide television" And "Sputnik Armenia" On Telegram, posts about Zelensky listening to himself received millions of views: the most viral publications appeared in the channels “Live broadcast"(895,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), Mash (853,000), "Ax Live"(822,000), "Before everyone else. Well almost"(462,000), Zergulio (433,000), "Dmitry Nicotin"(361,000), "Ne.Sugar"(261,000), "Gossip"(260,000), "KB"(259,000), "Signal" (240,000), "Uncle Slava"(229,000), "Urgently, now"(201,000), "Truthfulness"(199,000), "Putin on Telegram" (188,000) and "Ostashko! Important"(112,000). About the alleged fake of Ukrainian television wrote and the “Ministry of Truth” channel (53,000 views), calling itself as a fact-checking project. The video also became popular in public pages on VKontakte (examples here, here, here And here) and on "Peekaboo"
To begin with, “Verified”, as usual, tried to find the original source of the viral video. The earliest publication we could trace was appeared in the pro-Russian Telegram channel “Sheikh Tamir” (119,000 views), where the video was posted on September 21, 2023 at 12:04 Moscow time. “Verified” does not exclude that there are earlier posts without mentioning keywords in the caption to the video, but it is not possible to find them. Channel "Sheikh Tamir" mentioned in dozens of our analyzes and often turned out to be a source of dissemination of fakes, including fake videos, including some fabricated ethers TV channels.
As in most cases with fake videos, the same recording of the broadcast is distributed in all media and posts on social networks, and nowhere is there a video longer than 26 seconds. or recording the screen of the gadget and/or TV on which it is shown. Moreover, “Verified” did not see any reference to the broadcast in question in any media note or publication on social networks. It turns out that the video with the alleged editing error of the Ukrainian TV channel, two days after Zelensky’s speech, apparently appeared in a single copy on the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel, which had previously published fakes more than once, but none of the viewers of “1 + 1” noticed the mistake, if there was one.
His investigation into how a blunder with two Zelenskys appeared on the air of the “1 + 1” telethon, spent presenter of the LenTV24 channel (140,000 views on YouTube) Egor Krasotin. According to him, in order to figure out the “main mystery of the day,” he watched the official broadcast on the UN YouTube channel: “The UN doesn’t have anything like that, there’s only Zelensky there. It turns out that the Ukrainian TV channel “1 + 1” screwed up. Apparently, they wanted to show that there were a lot of people sitting in the hall during their president’s speech, and they interjected listeners from other speeches.” “Verified” also studied the UN recording, where there really was no editing error (the moment we are interested in begins at the mark 05:14:38).
However, it is not very clear why the presenter did not want or was unable to check broadcast, in fact, from “1 + 1”, where the blunder was allegedly shown. “Verified” studied it on the YouTube channel “TSN” - the news program of the TV channel “1 + 1”. There is a 12-hour video posted in section live broadcasts, that is, this is exactly how it was shown to the audience. In the Ukrainian recording, the president’s speech begins at the mark 01:35:30, and Zelensky pronounces the words from the viral excerpt in 01:36:48. Quote translated into Russian sounds So:
...not to deploy, not to proliferate, not to threaten or test, but to promote complete nuclear disarmament. Frankly, this is a good strategy. But this should not be the only strategy for protecting the world from this latest war. Ukraine gave up its third largest nuclear arsenal.
In the viral video, during Zelensky’s speech, five inserts are shown, which depict not the speaker, but the listeners in the hall, while “Verified” established that only the last one was shown in the original edit. In fact first, second And fourth were during US President Joe Biden's speech, and third, where the Ukrainian president was captured sitting in a chair, during the opening remarks of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
In the recording of the live broadcast of the “1 + 1” telethon, as in the UN version, Zelensky was not shown sitting in the hall during Zelensky’s speech. Moreover, in the broadcast of the Ukrainian TV channel, the president’s words were simultaneously translated by another person; at the bottom of the screen there was always a running line and a caption stating that this was Zelensky’s speech at the UN General Assembly in New York, and in the lower right corner of the video there was sign language translation.
The Ukrainian voice-over for the viral video was not specially recorded - “Verified” discovered such a soundtrack in one of the videos, also posted on the TSN YouTube channel. It was also published on September 19, it also there was no two Zelenskys. At the same time, in the upper corners of the video there are no logos of the marathon “1 + 1” and “United News”, which are present in the distributed recording.
“Verified” also found several inconsistencies in the viral video with the official symbols of the Ukrainian TV channel. Firstly, in the real “1 + 1” broadcast, the phrase “Droni for cordon” (“Drones for the border”) is placed symmetrically relative to the center of the QR code, while in the distributed video it is strongly shifted downwards; The ratio of letter sizes is also different. In addition, in official broadcasts the length of the Ukrainian flag is slightly longer than the length of the word “novini” (“news”), but in the viral video it’s the other way around. Moreover, in the “1 + 1” version, in contrast to the viral entry, the words “edini” (“united”) and “news” are located exactly above each other. Moreover, the distance between the logos in the upper right and left corners also differs.
“Verified” suggested that unknown persons could have used the original video from the TSN YouTube channel and put telethon symbols on it, having previously inaccurately cut out the logos from the real broadcast. However, you can notice that the viral video also cuts off part of the podium behind which Zelensky spoke. In addition, in the upper right corner of the TSN recording there is a UN emblem, which is not present in the viral video (and there are no visible signs of its removal). Probably, the authors of the fake simply cropped the TSN video. To test this theory, we took two screenshots of the same moment from the viral video and the real one, and then combined them. It turned out that the crop line of the frame runs exactly where the UN emblem ends.
On the evening of September 21 on the TSN website appeared official statement of the “United News” marathon. There they called the video with two Zelenskys a fake and claimed that its primary source was the “pro-Russian propagandist” Anatoly Shariy. Blogger indeed posted video on his Telegram channel (804,000 views), but he did it more than an hour after the post on the “Sheikh Tamir” channel.
On Thursday, September 21, Russian and pro-Russian sources began to spread false reports about the editing of the broadcast of Vladimir Zelensky's speech at the UN. The “United News” marathon team reports that this information is unreliable and calls on the journalistic community and authors of digital content to counter the Russian fake news.
In a joint appeal, the editors of the media involved in organizing and running the marathon called on them to make sure that the video is fake by checking YouTube broadcasts or archives OTT platforms. The authors point to the same signs of a fake as “Verified”: for example, a discrepancy in visual markings (geotitle, block and ticker), the translation voiced by different announcers, and the kind of video that formed the basis of the fake.
The refutation paid special attention to the fact that the fabricated video was distributed by some Ukrainian sources, including news sites, Telegram channels and even deputies of the Verkhovna Rada. “Verified” confirms this, since we found similar publications, for example, on the sites “Focus" And Vesti.ua, as well as in the channels "All-Seeing Eye 🇺🇦 Ukraine"(289,000 views), "Country politics"(78,000) and Klymenko Time (20,000; many Russian publications referred to this channel, but the post was soon supplemented with a refutation). The organizers of the marathon called for an investigation into the reasons for the spread of fake news in the Ukrainian information field and stated that there is no fact-checking in certain Ukrainian media: “It is important that the authors of such publications publicly indicate their erroneousness and inform readers about the fakeness of the published information.”
It is noteworthy that some Russian publications wrote about the refutation of the authors of the Ukrainian telethon, including RT, "RIA Novosti", Lenta.ru, "Moskovsky Komsomolets", "Star", EADaily And "Regnum" However, most of them changed the meaning of the statement: as if the editors of the marathon admitted the mistake and called for an audit of the Ukrainian media that disseminated the fragment containing it.
As for the statements about Zelensky’s speech in front of the half-empty hall of the UN General Assembly, they were checked by fact checkers from the projects Factcheck.kz And "Gwara Media". Our colleagues conducted their investigations into whether listeners really left the hall during the speech of the President of Ukraine and whether the small number of spectators indicates a loss of interest in Zelensky’s personality. In both cases, fact checkers concluded that such statements were manipulative.
Thus, on the air of the “1 + 1” telethon there was no error that made it appear as if Zelensky was listening to his own speech. This is confirmed both by a visual analysis of the viral video and by how and where it began to spread. The editors of the Ukrainian broadcast also called the recording a fake.
Cover photo: Office President of Ukraine
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