A 2017 video showing former comedian turned Ukrainian administrative official Vasily Gumenyuk singing as part of a sexualised-comedy skit, is being shared on social media misidentifying Gumenyuk as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
While Zelenskyy, who is also a former comedian turned politician, was part of the same show, the clip being shared on Facebook is that of Gumenyuk.
The minute-long video shows a man singing in Ukrainian and staring at the cleavage of the women present on stage, as the judges and audience react with laughter.
Facebook users have shared the video mocking Zelenskyy. One of the captions in Hindi reads, "Friends, Let's present to you. The new global hero, intellectual, librand (a slur to describe liberals), new brother-in-law of the elite. Great President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Alone, he is fighting against the whole Russian army. Salute to you"
Click here to watch the video.
(Original Text in Hindi: "मित्रों.... आपके सामने प्रस्तुत करते हैं.... नये वैश्विक हीरो, बुद्धूजीवी - लिब्राण्ड - एलीट समाज के नये जीजू, महान योद्धा, विश्व की धुरी, घोड़ा-गार्लिक....यूक्रेन के महान राष्ट्रपति - वोलोदयमिर ज़लेंस्क्य! अकेले पूरी रशियन फौज का डट कर मुकाबला करते हुए। नमन है, साष्टांग!!!!")
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Fact Check
BOOM broke up the video into key-frames (screenshots) and ran a reverse image search on Yandex - a Russian search engine. We found similar images from the same performance were used by several Ukrainian outlets.
On February 23, 2020, Ukrainian news site Telegraf headlined a report as, "Comedian from the "League of Laughter" was appointed as head of the RGA in Khmelnitsky: Zelensky's decree"
(Original headline in Ukrainian: Комик из "Лиги смеха" получил должность главы РГА на Хмельнитчине: указ Зеленского)
The report identified the person in the video as Vasily Gumenyuk (in Ukrainian:Василия Гуменюка), who is a comedian turned administrative official. Zelenskyy had appointed him in a new administrative role then. He became chairman of the Yarmolinetsky District State Administration of the Khmelnytsky region.
Gumenyuk's appointment also reported on Ukrainian outlets All Kharkov and Gordonua.
We ran a reverse image search on Google with another keyframes and found an article on Ukraine's Vinnytsia (in Russian: Vinnitsa) based outlets, Vinnitsa Info, which reported that Gumenyuk took part in a Ukrainian comedy show, named 'League of Laughter 2017", (Original text in Ukrainian: "Лига Смеха 2017")
The article carried a 4 minutes 25 seconds clip that was uploaded on YouTube on October 21, 2017.
The video showing Gumenyuk on the stage that was aired on the same day. Volodymyr Zelenskyi also appears at the start of the performance that is not seen in the viral video.
Zelenskyy owned the Studio Kvartal-95, also posted the same video on their Facebook page on October 25, 2017.
