A compilation video of Zelenskyy dancing includes clips that aren’t of him

A compilation video made up of five clips of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dancing includes a clip that depicts a different person entirely and another that has been edited using artificial intelligence (AI).

The video was originally posted on TikTok and features a man commenting on the clips. He says: “Can someone please explain this to me, please? What parallel universe have we stumbled into, where this is just kinda normal?”

The compilation has since appeared on Facebook, where it has been shared more than 5,100 times. 

But the first two clips in the video do not show President Zelenskyy.

The first one shows a man who looks like him in a tight sparkly outfit, who is actually a dancer named Pablo Acosta. The original video, posted on Instagram in June 2023, is of a higher resolution than the version shared on social media, making it clearer that it doesn’t show the Ukrainian president. Similar clips of Mr Acosta doing slightly different moves in the same outfit have been shared with claims they show President Zelenskyy—and we have fact checked these videos before. 

Blurring clips is a common method of making miscaptioned or edited photos or videos look more convincing—we have previously seen it in video game footage claiming to show real war zones and crudely face-swapped videos.

The second clip appears to show the Ukrainian president belly dancing in a red outfit at an 18th birthday party. We first fact checked this clip in January 2024 and it has recirculated several times since. 

As we have explained before, although the footage looks realistic, it has been modified using AI tools to impose President Zelenskyy’s face onto the dancer’s to create a deepfake.

A clip of the same dancer at an identical event was shared on Instagram in February 2022, and clearly does not feature the Ukrainian leader.

When the footage claiming to depict President Zelenskyy is slowed down, there also appear to be glitches in the face of the dancer.

The other clips in the compilation are genuine, however. 

Prior to becoming the leader of Ukraine, President Zelenskyy had been filmed dancing in his role as a comic actor, and the social media compilation features one such clip in which he featured in a group spoofing a Ukrainian boy band’s music video. 

The clip in which he appears to play a piano with his penis is also President Zelenskyy—although the clip also misleadingly shows Russian President Vladimir Putin laughing in the audience which actually comes from a completely different video of President Putin watching a different show.

The last clip of President Zelenskyy dancing with cones on his body is also real and has been circulating online recently. 

We have fact checked other misinformation about him recently, including a misleading video which claims to show him using an expletive when asked about President Donald Trump, and another video which claims it shows the Ukrainian president saying that Americans will have to send their “sons and daughters” to fight in Ukraine.