Fact Check: Video showing President Zelenskiy ‘admitting’ to using cocaine is digitally altered

Social media users are claiming a video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shows him saying he uses cocaine – but the clip was digitally altered. The video was edited to combine several clipped fragments from a 2019 interview in which he actually said he is addicted to coffee and does not use drugs.

The doctored video was circulated on social media, with one Instagram user sharing the caption, “Evidence this clown Zelensky is a habitual cocaine user! He recommends it to everyone” (here).

The original video was posted on Ukrainian online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda’s YouTube channel on January 21, 2019 (here). The caption of the video says that the interview occurred after Zelenskiy announced his candidacy for the president of Ukraine.

The manipulated video contains a conversation where, according to the subtitles, the interviewer asks Zelenskiy, “How do you feel about cocaine?” He responds by saying, “Awesome! Energy man number one. Seriously! This is energy for the whole day. At 7 am, I got up. Took a walk with the dogs. And I do snort drugs.”

Reuters used the Trint tool to transcribe the entire-hour long audio of the interview into Russian before translating the text on three different platforms: Google, DEEPL, and Bing. “And I do snort drugs” was not present in any of these translations.

Zelenskiy’s answer was partially edited from an answer about smelling coffee and a separate segment later in the interview where he talks about exercising as part of his morning routine.

From minutes 9:40 to 9:58 (here), he says, “I get up at 7:00 in the morning, take the dog for a walk, go to exercise. What is sport? You have to put in the effort. It’s energy.” He does not mention drugs in his answer in the original video.

Ukrainska Pravda addressed a slightly shorter version of the same altered clip in 2019 (here). Not only do they note the interview was edited and taken out of context, but also that Zelenskiy says, “I don't use drugs. I only sniff coffee because I'm a coffee addict. I really like coffee."

VERDICT

Altered. President Zelenskiy did not say he uses cocaine. The video has combined clips from a longer 2019 interview to change the meaning of what Zelenskiy was saying.

This article was written by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our social media claim verification work here .