Zelenskyy was a comic actor before he ran for political office. This video, made in 2014, was a parody of a well-known music video by the Ukrainian boy band Kazaky.
Snopes has received a number of inquiries from incredulous readers about the authenticity of a video that appears to show Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dancing to a pop song in high heels, a crop top, and skin-tight pants with three other, similarly dressed men.
The video is real, does in fact feature Zelenskyy dancing in high heels, and is often used in political attacks against him, as in this Feb. 26, 2023, tweet from Donald Trump Jr.:
Most of the world now knows Zelenskyy in a much more serious context, as the country's elected leader and the figurehead of Ukraine's war effort against the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. What many people outside Ukraine don't realize, apparently, is that before running for political office, Zelenskyy enjoyed a long career as a comic actor. The video above, created in 2014, was a parody of a music video released two years earlier by the Ukrainian boy band Kazaky:
Zelenskyy also voiced the character of Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian version of the film based on that story, and, in 2015, starred in the sitcom "Servant of the People," in which he played a schoolteacher who was elected president of Ukraine.
Nor was Zelenskyy's personal transition from actor to elected official unique or unprecedented. One need look no further than Ronald Reagan (a former U.S. president), Arnold Schwarzenegger (a former California governor), and Jesse Ventura (a former Minnesota governor) for notable examples.
Here is the full parody video featuring Zelenskyy dancing in high heels: