Ride the Lightning

Deepfake Video of Zelensky Surrendering Quickly Debunked

March 22, 2022

There are some good deepfake videos, to be sure. But this wasn’t one of them.

The Verge reported on March 16 on the deepfake of Zelensky surrendering in the Russian war against Ukraine.

The deepfake appears to have been first broadcasted on a Ukrainian news website for TV24 after an alleged hack. The video shows an edited Zelenskyy speaking behind a podium declaring that Ukraine has “decided to return Donbas” to Russia and that his nation’s war efforts had failed and that Ukrainians should “lay down arms.”

In the video, Zelenskyy’s head is much larger than in real life and is more pixelated than his surrounding body. The fake voice is much deeper than his real voice.

Meta’s head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, tweeted on March 16 announcing that the video had been removed from the company’s platforms. “Earlier today, our teams identified and removed a deepfake video claiming to show President Zelensky issuing a statement he never did. It appeared on a reportedly compromised website and then started showing across the internet,” Gleicher said.

YouTube has also taken down the video.

Earlier in March, the Ukrainian government issued a statement warning soldiers and civilians to pause when they see videos of Zelenskyy online, especially if he announced a surrender to Russian invasion. The Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications said that the Russian government would likely use deepfakes to convince Ukrainians to surrender.

After the deepfake started to circulate across the internet, Zelenskyy posted a video to his official Instagram account debunking the video. “As for the latest childish provocation with advice to lay down arms, I only advise that the troops of the Russian Federation lay down their arms and return home,” he said. “We are at home and defending Ukraine.”

“This is the first one we’ve seen that really got some legs, but I suspect it’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who is an expert in digital media forensics. He expects more and better deepfake videos to emerge and is concerned that people will not know what to believe.

I share that concern, especially if the quality of the videos markedly improves.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225, Fairfax, VA 22030
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