In October 2025, a recording went viral on RuNet of how, during an air raid, residents of the capital of Ukraine staged a mass rally at a metro station: they allegedly demanded that the president come down to them. We have verified the accuracy of this video.
The video began to circulate massively in the Russian-language segment of the Internet on October 12. In the Telegram channel "Solovyov"(181,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) what is happening is described as follows: ""Ze, come down to us!" The people of Kiev saw the light and staged a rally in the metro. Hiding in the subway from an air raid, they invite Zelensky to personally join in the “joy” of the consequences of his outstanding politics." Blogger Dmitry Nicotin (241,000 views) in his channel clarified that the Ukrainians wanted their president to wait out the missile attacks of the Russian Armed Forces not in a bunker. And the newspaperArguments and facts“added that a whole “underground flash mob” has started in Ukraine: Kiev residents allegedly post videos from the metro, where they invite Zelensky to freeze on the steps.
According to the TGStat service, at the time of writing this analysis, about 270 similar Russian-language posts appeared on Telegram, which in total received at least 1.5 million views. Channels wrote about the video “Ne.Sugar"(165,000 views), "Sheikh Tamir" (twice: 140,000 And 97,000), "Ukraine.ru"(123,000), Vobla (98,000), "Alexander Semchenko"(60,000), etc. In addition, the video went viral in X (examples here And here), Instagram, Facebook, "VKontakte" (here And here) and on Rutube.
The 10-second recording released shows a crowded metro station with a Ukrainian-language advertising banner on the wall. At the same time, some of the passengers are sitting on the stairs, and some are filming what is happening with smartphone cameras. In the background, several people can be heard shouting in Ukrainian: “Ze, come down to us.” The same inscription is superimposed on the video.
Only in a few “Verified” posts found mentionedthat the recording was allegedly made at the Kyiv station "Nivki" At the same time, we did not find information about when the Ukrainians called on Zelensky to visit the metro. However, thanks to a reverse search using the screenshot, it turned out that a similar video first appeared on the Internet three years ago. October 10, 2022 on the Facebook page “Radio Culture” published a video filmed in Kyiv at the Nivki station with the following caption: “People sing the folk song “Harness, boys, horses” while Russian troops continue rocket attacks on Ukrainian cities.” In this version, there was no recording of screams about Zelensky. Additionally, the video was 28 seconds long. and it was cropped.
Radio Culture states that the video was shot by a certain Maxim Koshelev. “Verified” established that it is Ukrainian journalist And producer, who has accounts on several social networks. We found the video we were interested in on its pages in X And TikTok. “Brave Ukrainians sing in the subway while hiding from Russian missile attacks on civilian targets in Kyiv,” he wrote on October 10, 2022.
When comparing Koshelev’s recording frame-by-frame with the version that went viral on the RuNet in 2025, it becomes clear that someone cut out a 10-second fragment of the original and replaced its audio track.
In addition, on October 10, 2022, Ukrainian media and Internet users distributed another video, also filmed at Nivki station. There you can hear people singing another Ukrainian folk song - “Oh, at the cherry orchard.” There were no calls to Zelensky again.
Judging by the fact that the same people in the same clothes appear in both videos, both videos were filmed at the Nivki station at approximately the same time.
The earliest post with an altered video among those tracked by “Verified” appeared on October 12 at 14:27 Moscow time in the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel “Urgent and accurate"(1800 views), and five minutes later a similar publication was posted by the channel"Shaman Rahu"(4800). Both these channel were mentioned many times in “Verified” analyzes as the primary sources of the spread of fakes. And there repeatedly published Ukrainian video with modified audio tracks.
Thus, the viral video in which Kiev residents urge Zelensky to go down to the subway is fake. The original video, filmed in October 2022, shows people singing a Ukrainian folk song.
Cover photo: social networks
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