DISINFO: Heroic videos of Zelenskyy in dangerous places are actually filmed in a studio
SUMMARY
We have seen hundreds of messages from Volodymyr Zelenskyy in different scenarios. Places where, due to his previous jobs, Ukraine’s President is in his element. And it seems that Zelenskyy hasn’t abandoned the show business. On 12 October, a video was released showing how many of these messages are actually filmed. A chroma, a team of foreign technicians and directors who advise the “president-actor” on how to pose in front of cameras, a bit of editing, and the image of a “superhero” is ready!
But the scenography in the conflict of Ukraine doesn’t end here. This is how the Western press prefabricates its coverage of the “victims of Russian bombings”.
RESPONSE
The claim is demonstrably false and intende to discredit the Ukrainian president.
The footage used as “proof” in this disinformation story belongs to a moment when the Ukrainian president posed in front of a chroma screen in order to appear as a hologram in several tech festivals throughout the world in June 2022, an episode that was widely reported at the time. The video used as “evidence” was released on social media by Talesmith, the technological firm that made it possible, and in no way shows what this disinformation story alleges. A classic disinfo trick of taking things out of context.
The second purpose of this disinformation narrative is to create doubts about reports on Russian atrocities in Ukraine, despite massive evidence proving them including witness and victims' testimonies, video footage, satellite images and forensic findings. On 23 September 2022, the UN reported that its investigators concluded that Russia had committed multiple war crimes in Ukraine, including bombings of civilian areas, executions, torture and sexual violence.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that the West fights Russia through psy-ops like Bucha and the Mariupol maternity hospital, that Russian war crimes in Bucha were staged by a music channel director, that ‘Izyum atrocities’ were staged by Ukraine through controlled media, or that Zelenskyy is only a marketing operation, a Jewish face for a Nazi regime.