IT’S BEEN ALMOST four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine but the steady stream of disinformation about President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not dried up. 

The Ukrainian leader and his wife Olena Zelenska have been the focus of countless attempts to paint them as corrupt and prone to spending vast amounts of money on luxury properties, goods and investments. 

It’s well known that corruption is widespread in Ukraine with Zelenskyy’s own chief of staff resigning last week after his home was raided by anti-corruption investigators.

However, the disinformation spread about the president is often outlandish.

One such false story is that Zelenskyy bought a villa in Florida worth $20 million dollars. 

The claim was spread on X in March of this year, a couple of weeks after Zelenskyy visited US President Donald Trump in Washington DC. 

The post and the video that accompanied it have been fact-checked by multiple news outlets. The villa shown in the video does exist but it was sold to the Ghandis, who own a number of businesses in the US, for $7.6 million (not $20 million). The Ukrainian president was also falsely linked to the purchase of a villa in the Caribbean. 

Another example is a claim made in a fake news broadcast that said Zelenskyy had bought a controlling stake in a platinum mining company in South Africa. 

The video purports to be a broadcast from South Africa’s national broadcaster SABC and is overlaid with audio that sounds like it is computer-generated. 

Again, the claim was fact-checked by a number of media outlets and SABC itself posted a clarification, labelling the claim fake news.  

Zelenskyy has also been falsely connected to the purchase of a private French bank.

A claim that Olena Zelenska bought a dress owned by Princess Diana worth $2.9 million originated in a Russian Telegram group in April. In fact, it was bought at an auction in New York in 1997 by a couple who still own it.

All of the above false claims emerged in 2025. 

In previous years, according to pro-Russian propagandists, Zelenskyy bought two yachts for $75 million, an $88 million euro luxury hotel in France, a £150 million casino in Cyprus, the musician Sting’s villa in Italy for €75 million euro, the Royal villa of Highgrove House in the UK (directly from King Charles) for £20 million, Adolf Hitler’s limousine, and Joseph Goebbels’ villa in Berlin. 

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