In December, a video featuring the logo of the University of Bristol, UK, began circulating online. The video falsely claims that a professor from the university compared Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to a vampire. It’s actually a fake, featuring a short clip of the professor’s actual lecture about vampires, combined with publically-available images and clips of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and AI voiceover, crafted to match the professor’s voice.
What happened?
On December 13, pro-Russian Telegram channels, such as “Kostian Cat — official channel” (Кот Костян – официальный канал) and “Olesia Loseva” (Олеся Лосева), shared a fake story. They claimed that a professor from the University of Bristol in the UK compared Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to a vampire.
The story says the professor studies mythical traits in real people and suggests that Zelensky has vampire-like qualities, such as a thirst for power and blood, the ability to hypnotize others, and the ability to live off the deaths of others. The news included a short video with the University of Bristol logo and a professor’s lecture.
The fake story was also spread by pro-Russian media, including ZOV Dnepropetrovsk (ZOV Днепропетровск), users on Instagram, and Russian forums.
Analysis
First, we examined the content on the official University of Bristol resources and found that the initial frames of the video shared in the news match an original video. In that video, Professor of History Ronald Hutton discusses vampires. This video featuring the professor was published on the official University of Bristol YouTube channel on November 8 of this year.
However, the video does not include any comparisons to real people. In reality, the professor discusses the history of the vampire character in Western folklore and vampires’ seductiveness — a trait not shared by other folkloric “monsters.”
“Almost no one wants to go to bed with a zombie, ghoul, mummy, or werewolf, but vampires come in different forms. They represent the dark, dangerous, and exciting aspects of sex, and this is explained by how they entered the Western world,” Professor Hutton says in the video.
After analyzing the frames of the shared video, we found that the propagandists used the first 7 seconds from the original video (featuring the professor). The rest of the footage combined publicly available images and videos, including clips from events and speeches involving Ukrainian President Zelenskyy.
To accompany the edited footage, Russian propagandists used an AI voice generator to create a voiceover imitating Professor Hutton’s voice. To make the fake voiceover match the original, they altered the professor’s voice in the opening frames of the video.
By creating and spreading this fake video, Russian propaganda attempts to portray the President of Ukraine as a “monster” who feeds off the lives of others.
Conclusion: Fake
Author: Anna Ormanzhy
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