A video is being circulated in the Bulgarian TikTok segment in which a seemingly barefoot Volodymyr Zelenskyi dances in an oriental costume. Mirella Petkova from the Facthceck.bg project drew attention to this video.

A video with Zelenskyi’s face appeared in December 2023 on a page on the TikTok network. However, this video is technically flawed. The original video, filmed in 2020, shows Russian dancer Vusal Mehdiyev, with Zelenskyi's face superimposed later.

The video from which the deepfake of Zelenskyi was compiled consists of two parts. The first part was first uploaded to TikTok on the profile of Vusal Mehdiyev on October 16, 2020. And the second – January 12, 2022. The second post received over 20 million views on TikTok.

In the original video, the music is different from the one put on by the fakers. In the initial videos, the music has oriental motifs, while in the fabricated version the Russian song “New Year” is played.

This is not the first time that artificial intelligence has been used to add Volodymyr Zelenskyi's face to dance videos. A similar video was distributed in July 2023. Then Zelenskyi’s face was put in place of the Argentine dancer and choreographer. This deepfake was debunked, in particular, by France Presse and Deutsche Welle.

The real Volodymyr Zelenskyi has many videos of him dancing. When he was an artist, he took part in many dance and singing performances of Kvartal 95 in KVN and on television, which were mandatory elements of the humorous program. And in 2006, he and dancer Olena Shoptenko won the first season of the Dancing with the Stars TV show.