‘Deepfake’ videos of Zelensky and Putin emerge on the margins of the conflict in Ukraine

Published on: 03/17/2022 – 18:05 Ukrainian media were hacked on March 16 broadcasting a video of Volodymyr Zelensky announcing the capitulation of the Ukrainian army. This poor quality video is a “deepfake”, a video made by animating their faces and modifying their voices to give them words they did not say. In response, other hackers reposted a similar video with Vladimir Putin announcing that he had made peace. Broadcast via several channels including Facebook, Twitter and Telegram, Volodymyr Zelensky’s video shows him saddened explaining to the camera in Ukrainian: Dear defenders [de l’Ukraine]. Being president turned out not to be so easy. I have to make tough decisions. First I decided to return the Donbass [à la Russie]. It’s time to face the truth: it didn’t work. […] And now I’m making another tough decision: to say goodbye to you. And I advise you to lay down your arms and return to your families. You should not die in this war. I advise you to live. And I will do the same. A deepfake of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling on his soldiers to lay down their weapons was reportedly uploaded to a hacked Ukrainian news website today, per @Shayan86 pic.twitter.com/tXLrYECGY4— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) March 16, 2022 This video was broadcast on the social networks of Segodnya, a Ukrainian Russian-language tabloid, as well as on the website of Ukraine 24 as shown in screenshots. Both outlets quickly reacted claiming to have been hacked, and denied the authenticity of the statement. The Ukrainian president himself also posted a video on the afternoon of March 16 to mock a video he deemed “childish”. He explains facing the camera: “”The only thing I can offer is that the Russian military put their weapons away and go home!” The virality of the video is difficult to analyze, because it was quickly deleted major platforms like Twitter or Facebook.Nevertheless, the major post on Twitter had reached 80,000 views and just over 400 retweets by the end of the day on March 16. This pro-Ukrainian account mocked the poor quality of the deepfake, claiming “Who are we fighting against? These disabled people don’t even know how to do a proper deepfake. This tweet from a pro-Ukrainian account mocks the poor quality of Zelensky’s deepfake. © Twitter According to the Atlantic Council website, the video was first shared in a pro-Russian Telegram group, “Operational”, welcoming that it was picked up in Ukrainian media and sharing the file of the video. The metadata indicated that the video was created on 16 march and shared two x hours later in the channel, and that its virality was mainly boosted via VK, the main social network in Russia. A deepfake of Vladimir Putin in responseA few hours after this deepfake of the Ukrainian president, another video surfaced, this time with a Vladimir Putin holding a pacifist speech, far from his last speeches. We hear him say in Russian: “Negotiations have just been held with Ukraine, and have ended with certain success for Russia. I’ll let you know quickly: we have achieved peace. with Ukraine. With Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, with Donetsk and Luhansk regions. We have agreed on the creation of a common fund with the EU and the USA for the reconstruction of infrastructures in these Ukrainian regions. We also signed a five-year roadmap for the rehabilitation of Crimea’s independence as a republic within Ukraine.[…] There will be no repression [en Ukraine]. Just as there will be no repression of the Russian population. All this is enshrined in the peace agreements. Life and peace go on.” A deepfake of Russian President Vladimir Putin claiming that Russia has won the war is circulating online today as well. pic.twitter.com/mEZIQOu5wj— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) March 16, 2022 This video had already circulated a few days ago according to a journalist from the American media DailyDot. Again, the video, whose origin is difficult to find, was not widely shared: it simply reached 70,000 views and is still visible on Twitter relayed by pro-Ukrainian accounts. Alerts on the dissemination of deepfakes less than two weeks earlierOn March 2, Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security alerted its followers with a Facebook post, explaining: “Imagine seeing on TV Volodymyr Zelensky making a statement about the capitulation from the country. You see it, you hear it. But that’s not the truth. It’s a deepfake created by machine learning algorithms.” Can such content really deceive? According to Gérald Holubowicz, product manager journalist for various media, specialist in deepfakes joined by the editorial staff of France 24 Observers, we must remain cautious. If we look at the credibility of the content, there is first of all a quality problem: we see that the size of the head [de Volodymir Zelinski, NDLR] is disproportionate to the neck, and that the diffusion channel has remained relatively ineffective. But also and above all a problem of context: President Zelensky has strong credibility with Ukrainians and has direct communication channels, so the fake was immediately challenged. However, accusations of political deepfake generally concern controversial figures who were heavily heckled, as was the case in Gabon in particular. [des opposants avaient accusé le pouvoir d’avoir diffusé un deepfake d’un discours du président Ali Bongo après son AVC, le pensant incapable de gouverner, NDLR]. The idea is to create confusion between what is true and what is false, and it becomes difficult for a politician to prove that a video is true or false. “Faced with an unprepared population, this type of content can be very dangerous”However, Gérald Holubowicz believes that the conflict in Ukraine is the first where we have seen the multiplication of deepfakes, in particular of Vladimir Putin, aimed at misleading public opinion. He continues: We see that the synthetic media is beginning to take an important part in this battle of misinformation. And there is a problem of knowledge of this subject, and faced with an unprepared population, this type of content can be very dangerous. For a used eye, the manipulation is obvious. But the situations faced by Ukrainians place them in uncertainty, and such a video broadcast massively on Telegram or WhatsApp can clearly sow panic for someone who is not used to it. We can also fear that it is phases of testing or learning from hackers: they publish videos to see how misleading it can be, and study what mistakes they may have made to then produce another more convincing fake. And at the same time, with the videos of Zelensky piling up, it also creates videos that they can work on and improve on. If the conflict drags on, I’m afraid we can expect more deepfakes more convincing, and that is why it is important to raise public awareness of these issues, and in particular that the open-source platforms that allow the creation of such content be more transparent about the origin of these videos. Detect a deepfakeDeepfake type videos intended to deceive on a large scale are relatively rare, although there are a few recent cases such as in Cameroon or even more recently in Mali. Generally of poor quality, because they require significant investments to be carried out properly, they often remain easy to detect. Here are some tips listed in an episode of Info or Intox.