This Video Showing Zelenskyy Performing in Front of Putin Is Edited

Two different videos from the Russian comedy show, KVN, from 2002 and 2006, have been merged to make the viral clip.

A video is going viral with a claim that it shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy performing in front of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin is seen sitting in the audience and applauding the performance.

Several such claims about Zelenskyy have gone viral amid the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, which began with the Russian invasion of the country on 24 February 2022.

However, we found that the viral clip consisted of two different videos of a Russian comedy show, which was merged into one. The first clip shows Zelenskyy performing in a Russian comedy show, KVN Major League, in 2002, and the second clip shows Putin at the same show's 2006 Special Project.

CLAIM

Several social media users shared the 16-second-long clip with claims about Zelenskyy performing in front of Putin.

One of the posts says, "20 years ago. Young Vladimir @ZelenskyyUa performs at stand-up in front of Putin on popular #Russian TV show. Who could imagine, that in 2022 Zelenskiy will stand up for #Ukraine against Putin in his paranoid #war? [sic]"

The same video was shared multiple times on Facebook and Twitter, the archives of which can be seen here, here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We fragmented the video into multiple keyframes using the InVid Google Chrome extension and then conducted a reverse image search on them using Google.

This led us to a 2012 video posted by the YouTube channel of 'KVN', a Russian comedy show.

The one-and-a-half-hour-long video is titled in Russian, which reads, "KVN major league 2002," and it shows Zelenskyy's performance. But Putin is nowhere to be seen in this video.

At the 35:26 timestamp, the same viral clip of Zelenskyy standing with his group on stage is visible.

On conducting a reverse image search of Putin's still from the viral video, we found another YouTube video uploaded on 19 November 2013 on the same show's channel.

The video shows Putin sitting in the audience at the 1:07 mark. The title of the video reads, "KVN Premier League team - Special project 2006," in Russian.

Putin can be seen in the audience while reacting to somebody else’s performance, not Zelenskyy's.

Evidently, an edited video clip was shared with the false claim that now-Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's performance was applauded by Russian President Vladimir Putin while he was in the audience.

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