On December 7, 2023, a recording of an alleged conversation between the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his wife, Olena Zeleska, was disseminated on social networks and Russian news agencies (1, 2, 3, 4). In the disseminated recording, Zelenskyy criticizes the leaders of the US, Germany, and Poland and accuses Biden, whom he calls an old hypocrite, of firing Reznikov. In addition, Zelenskyy, after talking with Blinken, whom he calls a clown, complains to Olena Zelenska that it turns out that Biden is asking to solve the problem of corruption, which is impossible in the conditions of war, and without corruption, the entire administration would collapse – “no one is going to engage in this whole f*cking war for free” – we hear in the recording.
The recording which allegedly shows Volodymyr Zelensky talking to Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska and cursing Western leaders is most likely been generated by computer software. The primary source of the recording is a portal that often spreads disinformation. In addition, in the audio, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Olena Zelenska have a different intonation compared to the real one, and there are other suspicious details in the recording.
The recording which allegedly shows the conversation between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Olena Zelenska was originally published by The Intel Drop on December 6, 2023. According to the article, in a leaked phone call between President Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife, the Ukrainian leader refers to his Western counterparts with derogatory terms. The article also mentions that Zelenskyy recognizes the large scale of corruption in Ukraine and the inability to fight it. It is also noted that Zelenskyy worries that the West wants to control him and labels the actions of the Polish leadership as a betrayal.
At the end of the article published by The Intel Drop, it is noted that it is not known where the phone recording of Zelenskyy and his wife came from, although the publication suspects that the recording may have been released by both Ukrainian and Western intelligence agencies after Zelensky’s sharp deterioration of popularity among Western allies and the leadership of the Ukrainian army.
It should be noted that the mentioned recording was not published in any reliable media other than a few Russian online media and The Intel Drop. The author of the article is not indicated on the website, but it should be noted that individual internet users can also publish an article on the website. Among the articles, there are many interviews and articles of the famous Kremlin propagandist Scott Ritter. Also, in March 2023, the same site, authored by Alexander Sitnikov, disseminated disinformation, according to which NATO and US officers were destroyed in Kyiv. The author of the mentioned article had written several other articles for the site regarding the Russia-Ukraine war.
According to Whois.DomainTools, The Intel Drop was created on September 9, 2022, and its IP address is located in Louisiana.
The video uploaded to YouTube by The Intel Drop has been removed for violating YouTube’s community standards. As for the recording itself, several details indicate its inauthenticity. In the recording, both Zelenskyy and his wife speak very slowly and unnaturally. One gets the impression that Zelenskyy is reading a pre-written and prepared text. Less emotionality is generally characteristic of artificially generated speech. In addition, although the voice of Olena Zelenska and Volodymyr Zelenskyy is similar to their real voice, the intonation is still different. It is also worth noting that the role of Olena Zelenska is downplayed in the recording as if the first lady of Ukraine is not interested in politics and current events, and Zelenskyy tries to explain what Western leaders are telling him and accusing him of. In the recording, Olena Zelenska is limited to only a few lines. “Why? I don’t understand, it’s impossible” – we hear from Zelenska in the recording, which sounds unnatural from the first lady. It is also strange that in the recording Olena Zelenska speaks in Ukrainian, while Volodymyr Zelensky answers her mostly in Russian and only a few times uses Ukrainian words in the conversation. Also, the conversation is built on the often repeated propaganda narratives of the Kremlin about the corruption of Ukraine and the artificially created image of the democratic state of Ukraine.
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