A fake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appearing to tell his soldiers to lay down their weapons began circulating online this week, raising questions about just how easy it is for bad actors to influence the information flooding the zone as Russia continues to invade Ukraine.
Experts have quickly debunked the apparent deepfake—in part because it’s almost laughable how badly made the video is, according to Mounir Ibrahim, vice president of impact at Truepic, a company with backing from Microsoft’s venture capital arm to help root out deepfakes or manipulated media online.
“The fact that it’s so poorly done is a bit of a headscratcher,” Ibrahim told The Daily Beast. “You can clearly see the difference this is not the best deepfake we’ve seen—not even close.” Ibrahim cautioned that he had not analyzed the apparent deepfake to verify exactly what kind of manipulated media it was, and whether it could be classified as a deepfake—media that had been manipulated using machine learning—or a cheap fake—altered media changed with cheap technology—or other synthetic media.
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But the most problematic part of this whole episode is not that the video exists—at least it has been called out quickly—but that bad actors, whether it’s government-backed activity or regular old tricksters, will increasingly be interested in taking advantage of using manipulated media to spread lies.
“As we start seeing more and more cheap fakes, deepfakes flood the zone, it’s going to desensitize people and allow bad actors to allege ‘nothing is real on the ground, you can’t trust anything,’” Ibrahim told The Daily Beast. “And the existence of these fakes help amplify bad actors calls.”
Confusion about the alleged deepfake has spread as false claims that Zelensky is surrendering also appeared on Ukraine's 24 TV channel. The channel said in a post on Facebook the chyron was fake, claiming it had been “hacked by enemy hackers.”
Zelensky himself came out after the video began circulating with his own signature self-shot video reminding Ukrainians that if he were to tell anyone to lay down their arms, it would be the Russians.
Facebook took down a fake Zelensky video Wednesday for violating its policy on manipulated media.
“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,” Nathanial Gleicher, Facebook or Meta’s head of security policy said in a statement.
Ukraine warned early this month that Russia might seek to spread disinformation about its invasion in Ukraine by using manipulated videos of Zelensky appearing to announce surrender.
“Videos made through such technologies are almost impossible to distinguish from the real ones,” Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security under the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, designed to call out misinformation, said in a statement. “Be aware—this is a fake! His goal is to disorient, sow panic, disbelieve citizens and incite our troops to retreat. Rest assured—Ukraine will not capitulate!”
Combing through the disinformation about Russia’s invasion in Ukraine has been a daily battle since even before Russian President Vladimir Putin made the move to attack Ukraine last month. The Biden Administration warned Putin may work to create false flag attacks against his own forces in order to claim a justification for attacking Ukraine.
More recently, Russia has been digging in on its false claims that the United States or Ukraine might use chemical or biological weapons against Russian forces—a web of disinformation that Zelensky has said could be a signal Putin himself plans to use chemical or biological weapons against Ukraine.
And Russia has been claiming, without evidence, for months that the United States might be preparing a chemical weapons attack.
And though this case of the apparent Zelensky deepfake has been quickly clarified, it may not be the last time bad actors will take advantage of Ukraine, or other conflict zones for that matter, by creating deepfakes or manipulated media meant to cause confusion or spread fake information.
“Could this be random people throwing spaghetti at the wall, or is it a state backed actor? It could be any of the above. That underscores the issue… image deception, whether it is wholly synthetic or rudimentary, is now so democratized that anybody in theory could begin putting out either crappy deceptive media or really sophisticated deceptive media,” Ibrahim said.
The faked video comes just as Russia's foreign minister has suggested publicly that a deal with Ukraine may be on the horizon soon enough.
Three weeks into the war, though, Russian forces continue to hit civilians and civilian infrastructures. Just Wednesday, Russian forces reportedly attacked a theater in Mariupol.
Zelensky has said in recent days, after multiple meetings aimed at negotiating peace failed to lead to successful cease fires, that Ukraine has begun to recognize that joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization may not be a realistic goal—a move that may be easing negotiations with the Russians.
It is not clear exactly how a potential deal would play out, but it should involve Russian forces leaving Ukrainian territories taken since the invasion began, a Zelensky adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said.
