A video showing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dancing in a red costume alongside a clip of Nepalese politician and rapper Balendra Shah (also known as Balen) was shared on social media with claims that just like Ukraine got “comedian Zelenskyy”, Nepal may end up with Balen.
On September 8, massive protests began in Nepal, led mainly by ‘Gen Z’, demanding an end to the corruption and repressive measures under the regime of former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. As tensions escalated and protests intensified, at least 72 people lost their lives while nearly 200 were injured. On September 9, Oli resigned and five days later, on September 14, Sushila Karki, the former chief justice was chosen as interim Prime Minister, with elections scheduled to be held in six months. Amidst this, Balen Shah, the mayor of Kathmandu since 2022, won strong support among young people owing to his bold style in addressing issues plaguing Nepal. There is speculation that he could be the country’s next PM.
On September 10, senior journalist and editor-in-chief of Times Now, Rahul Shivshankar (@RShivshankar), shared the video showing Zelenskyy dancing with the caption: “PERFORMERS. BUT WHO HAS WRITTEN THE SCRIPT? Ukraine got comedian Zelenskyy. Nepal may end up with rapper ‘Balen’. (Archive)
The video of Zelenskyy dancing had gone viral earlier too. Even Donald Trump Jr had reshared it in February (Archive). Screenshots below:
Fact Check
Note that before joining politics, Zelenskyy enjoyed a successful career as a comedian and actor, which led many to believe this was a clip from his career. But to verify if this was actually the case, we broke it down into keyframes. On running a reverse image search on one of these, we were led to this YouTube video uploaded on December 1, 2020.
We examined the video and could conclude that the person dancing in the red costume, who appears in the first 17 seconds of this video, is not Ukrainian President Zelenskyy.
Below are a few comparisons.
A careful look at the above comparisons also made it evident that Zelenskyy’s face was superimposed on the original video, which is at least five years old. However, the low quality of the video showing the Ukrainian President made it hard for us to run it through AI detection tools or find more discrepancies.
We also found fact checks by AFP and France24 from 2024 that said the video was a deepfake. These fact-check articles also located the original clip on TikTok (Archive) uploaded by a Russian dancer in October 2020. The video is unavailable now. However, we found the user had reshared it in 2022.
Based on these findings, we were certain that the video showing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dancing was created using AI tools.
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