Is it true that Ukrainian television used a neural network to add listeners to the video of Zelensky’s speech at the UN?

In September 2025, news spread in the Russian media and social networks that the Ukrainian TV channel “1 + 1” changed the recording of the speech of the President of Ukraine, increasing its audience in the meeting room using artificial intelligence. We have verified the veracity of this claim.

“Zelensky was completed with spectators in an empty hall at the UN. The Ukrainian channel “1 + 1”, using neural networks, added listeners to an almost empty hall during Zelensky’s speech at the UN General Assembly, but the completed people did not even move, which immediately caught the eye,” they wrote in the Telegram channel “Putin on Telegram"(160,000 views at the time of writing this analysis). In the channel "Banksta"(87,000 views, post deleted) added that the television crews were "ordered» generate delegates, and compared Ukrainian television with North Korean television. “The work turned out to be a C grade. The drawn people in the video don’t even move,” the TV channel assessed the alleged fake NTV (33,000 views). “It turned out to be completely outright bullshit in the form of motionless heads. But the method itself will now definitely be adopted in Kyiv. Cheap and convenient. And the intellectual level of those who consume Ukrainian media is such that they will happily gobble up even a craft of such a low level,” they wrote in the Telegram channel “Voenkor Kitten"(75,000 views).

According to the TGStat service, at least 450 similar Russian-language posts appeared on Telegram, which in total received about 4 million views. The channels of a Russian TV presenter reported on the alleged forgery on Ukrainian television Ruslana Ostashko (78,000 views), TV channel "Constantinople" (72,000), as well as "Operation Z: Military Correspondents of the Russian Spring"(434,000), "KB"(237,000), "Luka Ebkov"(218,000), "Ne.Sugar"(200,000), "Uncle Slava" (153,000), "Russia now"(141,000), Vobla (100,000), "Ukraine.ru" (93,000), "Bloodseeker 2.0"(80,000), "Feed of the day"(73,000), "Oleg Tsarev"(71,000), "The goat screamed"(68,000), SimpDungeon (67,000), "Moment"(63,000), "Rosich | Rosich" (59,000), "Military report"(54,000), "Wrong side" (55,000), "Urgently, now"(51,000), Lomovka (50,000), etc. Similar publications are found in “VKontakte" And "Odnoklassniki", as well as on media sites, including Lenta.ru, Life.ru, "Komsomolskaya Pravda", "Arguments and facts", EADaily, "Evening Moscow", "Notebook", "Prime", "Military Review", "Public news service", "Paragraph" And TopNews. The news also spread in English: for example, in X about this wrote English-language service of the RT news agency (156,000 views).

President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky spoke at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly on September 24. In his speech, the politician called on world leaders to take decisive action against Russian aggression. The Ukrainian president also said that the modern international security system has weakened and needs to be updated. Zelensky specifically focused on the topic of technology development: “We are experiencing the most destructive stage of the arms race, because it includes artificial intelligence, and now there are no real guarantees of security.”

Since Zelensky’s speech was recorded from several angles, according to published broadcasts on UN resources show that at that moment in the hall, indeed, was not many delegates. It is difficult to name the exact number of those present, but visually there were much fewer of them than during the speeches the day before Antonio Guterres And Donald Trump (The UN Secretary General and the US President traditionally speak at the beginning of the session). At the same time, Zelensky’s audience in the hall is comparable in size to many other speeches: for example, the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, President of France Emmanuel Macron, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergei Lavrov and representatives of other countries.

Alleged fraud on the air of the Ukrainian telethon "United news" allegedly proves the video length near 6 sec. The upper half of the footage presented there almost completely matches the recording published on UN resources. However, in the lower part of the empty chairs are not visible - on the contrary, they are filled with people who do not move throughout the entire video.

“Verified” studied recordings of live broadcasts on the TSN YouTube channel, where saved broadcasts of the telethon are available. On September 24, in the news at 16:00, the speech of the President of Ukraine demonstrated in its entirety, with live coverage from the hall of the UN General Assembly in New York and without installation, which Russian media and Telegram channels write about. Zelensky’s speech was later discussed, for example, in news broadcasts in 17:00 And 18:00, as well as in final issue for the day - in all these cases with a general plan of the hall, where many empty seats were visible. Non-moving listeners didn't show and on the morning news on September 25.

Moreover, on the social networks of the President of Ukraine his speech was also published without any changes regarding audience size. The same applies to videos of his speech posted on YouTube channels of other Ukrainian media: for example, “Freedom" And "Suspilne noviny"

The short video used as evidence of deception appears to have originally appeared on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. “Verified” was unable to unambiguously identify the original source due to the abundance of different signatures, but the earliest publication that we found using keywords was published on September 25 at 12:53 Moscow time in the Telegram channel Alex Parker Returns (120,000 views). Previously this channel has repeatedly distributed misinformation. It turns out that attention was paid to the alleged forgery of Ukrainian television crews on the RuNet only after almost a day.

At the same time, the viral video shows clear signs of falsification. The first thing that catches your eye is that on Ukrainian television the video of Zelensky’s speech was not cropped, unlike the version that went viral on the RuNet. Accordingly, the logos of United News and the 1 + 1 channel were located in other places.

Moreover, in the viral video, the distance between the flag of Ukraine and the words “United News” is greater than in the original broadcast published on the TSN YouTube channel. The placement of the flag and the "1+1" logo in relation to each other also varies.

The audio tracks are also different. Thus, during the telethon, Zelensky’s speech was simultaneously translated into Ukrainian, but in the viral video only speech in English is heard. Moreover, in the original broadcast from the UN, there is a wide shot of the empty hall for 17 seconds. showed at the beginning of the speech of the President of Ukraine, when he said: “Nations can talk about their pain from platforms like this, but even during the bloodshed there is not a single international organization that could really stop it. That’s how weak these institutions have become.” And in the viral video, the politician says words from end of his speech: “The war has already affected too many people to pretend that it does not [have anything to do with you].” Then the cameramen showed Zelensky in close-up, and he did not look into the hall, as can be seen in the recording that went viral on the RuNet.

Although the footage showing the crowded hall at Zelensky’s speech is definitely fake, “Verified” cannot reliably confirm that they were created using a neural network. However, upon careful examination of the viral video, it is noticeable that the lower part with a filled audience was inaccurately superimposed on the original video sequence: details of the scene are duplicated, and parts of the legs of the security officers at the edges of the podium are missing.

In September 2023, Russian media and Telegram channels will already wrote, that in Ukraine the broadcast of Zelensky’s speech at the UN General Assembly was edited so that the hall seemed full, and at the same time they made a mistake: it turned out that the president was listening to his own speech. Then the proof was also a short video with the logos of the “United News” telethon and the “1 + 1” channel. However, that viral video turned out to be fake.

Thus, the Ukrainian TV channel did not add viewers to the broadcast of Zelensky’s speech at the UN. The video that supposedly proves this fraud was doctored and first appeared on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, which have been repeatedly caught spreading similar anti-Ukrainian fakes.

Cover photo: @unitednations (YouTube) / social networks

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

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