A video shows Russian president Vladimir Putin laughing with his face in his hands during a comedy routine in which Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears to play the piano with his penis, before he became president of Ukraine.
False. These two clips are from different events and have been edited together to misleadingly make it appear as if President Putin was in the audience for the routine.
A video which appears to show Volodymyr Zelenskyy, before he became President of Ukraine, performing a comedy routine for an audience that includes Russian president Vladimir Putin has been shared on social media.
But this video is actually made up of two unrelated pieces of footage which have been edited together. As we have explained before, President Putin was not in the audience for the comedy sketch shown.
The caption says: “Before he was President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky [sic] was an actor and comedian. One of his ‘acts’? Pretending to play the piano with his private parts—on stage. And yes, this performance reportedly happened in front of Putin.”
The first clip shows President Zelenskyy pretending to play a piano with his penis as part of a comedy sketch that aired in September 2016, uploaded to YouTube by Studio Kvartal 95, his comedy troupe-turned production company. Before becoming the leader of Ukraine, President Zelenskyy was a comedian.
But the next clip, showing President Putin laughing while seated in an audience, is unrelated to President Zelenskyy’s sketch. It shows a completely different video of President Putin watching a different show.
The caption of one YouTube video says the clip is part of “KVN 2011 Special Project: 50 Years of KVN (THE ENTIRE GAME)”. KVN is a televised comedy competition which sees amateur troupes from former Soviet republics compete against each other.
President Zelenskyy had previously participated in KVN but is not what President Putin is laughing at in the video. The earliest example of this clip of Mr Putin we could find online also dates back to 2011, five years before President Zelenskyy’s piano performance.
We have fact checked other misleading videos of President Zelenskyy recently, including one which falsely claims to show him using an expletive when asked about US President Donald Trump, and another which claims it shows the Ukrainian president saying that Americans will have to send their “sons and daughters” to fight in Ukraine.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because although both clips are genuine, they have been edited together to make it appear as though Vladimir Putin was in the audience for this routine performed by Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
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