Today, Propastop publishes an article by the fact-checking project “Provereno.Media,” which analyses how Russian propaganda systematically spreads fake news about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Wtitten by: Daniil Fedkevich, “Provereno.Media”.
In the third year of the full-scale war, Z-channels have continued to publish falsehoods about both ordinary Ukrainians and the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. According to the narrative created by propagandists, the politician embodies several personas at once: while leading a nation at war, he allegedly finds time to abuse drugs, suppress opponents, secure aid from allies, and use the funds to purchase luxury real estate around the world.
Drug Addict
The narrative about Zelenskyy’s alleged drug addiction is arguably the most popular among Z-bloggers. Interestingly, it wasn’t Kremlin propaganda that initially launched this claim, but rather political opponents of Zelenskyy in Ukraine. Back in 2019, just three weeks after announcing his presidential bid, Zelenskyy had to address the rumour about his supposed cocaine addiction in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda. Later, his opponent in the second round of elections, Petro Poroshenko, hinted at the same accusation. Before the decisive debates, both candidates even took drug tests, which confirmed they were “clean.”
Although Russian propaganda had already touched on this topic before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its efforts escalated significantly after February 2022. Many channels began using euphemisms referring to drug addiction instead of Zelenskyy’s actual name. Initially, “evidence” of his alleged substance abuse included edited photographs or edited interviews. However, by 2023, the disinformation campaign took on a more sophisticated approach. Fact-checkers at Provereno.Media discovered that, over several months, pro-Kremlin outlets circulated videos of foreign celebrities urging someone named Vladimir to seek treatment for drug addiction and check into rehab. While the surname of the intended recipient was never mentioned, Z-channels insisted the messages were directed at Ukraine’s president.
Investigations revealed that most of these videos were genuine and had been ordered through Cameo—a platform where celebrities can record personalized messages for a fee. However, it appears the buyers failed to disclose that the clips would be used as part of a disinformation campaign.
In 2024, no attacks of such scale were recorded, but in the spring, disinformation creators did not miss the opportunity to “cover” Zelenskyy’s trip to the inauguration of Argentine President Javier Milei a few months earlier in their characteristic manner. “Moskovsky Komsomolets,” “Tsargrad,” and other media reported that the Ukrainian delegation allegedly transported 300 kg of cocaine from Buenos Aires. This claim was based on publications from two websites that mimicked news outlets and were specifically created to spread disinformation, the pro-Kremlin resource The Intel Drop, as well as an Argentine journalist who had previously worked as an observer at the “referendums” on the annexation of the occupied territories of Ukraine.
Dictator
In his 2019 election campaign, Zelenskyy promised to serve only one term as president. His mandate as head of state was set to expire in the spring of 2024, but due to the war, elections at all levels are not being held in the country. However, some of Zelenskyy’s opponents and Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted that the politician had simply deceived everyone, claiming that Ukraine’s Constitution explicitly prohibits only parliamentary elections, not presidential ones, during martial law.
In response, legal experts repeatedly and thoroughly explained that, according to the same Constitution, Zelenskyy must remain in office until a new president is elected. Elections cannot be held not only because of martial law but also because residents of occupied territories, as well as many military personnel and refugees, would simply be unable to vote.
When this topic was actively discussed in both Ukrainian and Kremlin-controlled Russian media in March and April, disinformation creators also decided to make their “contribution” to the debate. For example, Z-channels widely circulated a video showing a billboard with the slogan, “You can’t choose a president, but you can choose beer,” allegedly displayed outside a bar on Khreshchatyk. In reality, the mocking advertisement was added during video editing, and the spot featured a regular signboard for an optical store.
Much of the exaggerated talk about Zelenskyy’s authoritarianism was fueled by his decision to dismiss the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who had recently come close to matching the president in popularity in pre-election polls, although he had not openly declared any presidential ambitions.
Shortly afterward, Kremlin-affiliated outlets such as Argumenty i Fakty and Komsomolskaya Pravda circulated a video styled to resemble BBC reporting, claiming that Zaluzhnyi had allegedly received $53 million from Zelenskyy in exchange for abandoning his political ambitions. However, the video turned out to be fake, and the story it presented was entirely fabricated.
It is worth noting that some similar reports do turn out to be true. For instance, this summer, during Ukraine’s match at the UEFA European Football Championship, unknown individuals displayed a blue-and-yellow flag in the stands with the inscription “Give us elections.” However, it is impossible to say with certainty whether these were Ukrainians genuinely concerned about the political situation in their country or people with no connection to Ukraine at all.
Beggar
Throughout the full-scale war, Kremlin propagandists have consistently used Zelenskyy’s speeches, in which he asks Western allies for military and financial aid, as a pretext to accuse him of begging.
The largest series of fakes on this topic spread in 2022-2023: during this period, Z-channels regularly reported on graffiti supposedly created by anonymous Polish artists in various cities across Europe and the U.S., depicting the Ukrainian leader as a black hole or locusts consuming money and weapons. In some cases, the alleged drawings were blatantly offensive, with Zelenskyy depicted as a pimple or a pile of feces. All of these graffiti images were added to real photos through editing and “legitimized” via an Instagram account of “Polish artists” (sometimes photos were taken in one city, but the caption claimed a different location).
The same method was used by an unknown associate of Russian propagandists, living in an eastern suburb of Paris. “Provereno” discovered several instances where fake creators added anti-Zelenskyy and anti-Ukraine graffiti to photos taken by him, with some of these later being presented as photos taken in other European cities.
The spread of such fakes continued into 2024. In February, Z-channels reported on graffiti depicting Zelenskyy as a baby with the inscription “Give money,” based on a photograph taken in the suburbs of Paris. In the fall, the same resources circulated an image of graffiti allegedly created in London: it showed the Ukrainian president added to the cover of the Abbey Road album, with Zelenskyy pulling a wallet from the musician George Harrison of The Beatles.
Corrupt
Russian propagandists claimed that Zelenskyy and other high-ranking Ukrainian officials were embezzling part of the Western aid in the first two years of the full-scale war, but in 2024, such disinformation was legitimized in a more original manner. Initially, paid articles were published in little-known African media outlets, and later, disinformation creators began to create fake websites mimicking European or American media. As “evidence,” they posted AI-generated videos with “journalists” and “witnesses,” as well as falsified documents.
In the past year and a half, according to Kremlin propagandists, Zelenskyy has acquired elite real estate around the world: luxurious villas in Egypt and the U.S., a former mansion of King Charles III, a winery in Italy, and hotels in Cyprus and Courchevel. In such fakes, the narrative of widespread Nazism in Ukraine is often played out — allegedly, the Ukrainian president bought Goebbels’ mansion near Berlin and one of Hitler’s personal cars. A similar fabrication was created in the summer about Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska — it was claimed that she had purchased a Bugatti supercar for €4.5 million, but again, this information was spread through a fake media outlet.
…and the West understands all of this
One of the key tasks of Russian propaganda is to convince the audience that the people of Europe and the U.S. actually support the Kremlin, but local governments prevent them from voicing their opinions. To achieve this goal, for over 2.5 years, Z-channels have been spreading fake covers of Charlie Hebdo and other foreign satirical magazines, supposedly mocking Zelenskyy and Ukraine.
Similar fakes with a similar narrative are often timed to Ukrainian delegations’ visits for negotiations with allies. For example, at the end of May, pro-Kremlin resources circulated a video allegedly showing Belgian deputies laughing during Zelenskyy’s visit to Brussels. In reality, the viral video was fabricated, and the people shown as Belgian politicians were likely media managers from the Netherlands. When the Ukrainian president traveled to the UN General Assembly in September, Z-channels published a video of protesters holding signs with the slogans “Fuck Ukraine” and “No Money to Dictators” (the latter featured Zelenskyy’s portrait). In fact, the propagandists edited a video from a year earlier, where the signs actually called for “stopping the genocide in Ukraine” and continuing to support Kyiv.
To give more weight to their fabrications, disinformation creators sometimes use the authority of well-known figures. For example, shortly after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, Z-channels shared a screenshot of a tweet allegedly posted by the politician’s ally, billionaire Elon Musk. The post featured an image of a dollar bill with Trump making an obscene gesture, accompanied by the caption “The last dollar for Zelenskyy.” However, Musk never posted such a tweet, and the image was fabricated.
Who spreads these fakes — and why do people believe them?
Although outside of Russia (and often within the country as well), it is commonly believed that Kremlin propaganda is largely limited to “flagships” like Vladimir Solovyov and Margarita Simonyan, the spread of most fakes does not typically start with them — in fact, they often do not even repost them on their own channels.
In most cases, the original source of these fakes was relatively small, anonymous Telegram channels, where the authors claimed that a subscriber, wishing to remain unnamed, had sent them a photo of the latest graffiti or advertisement. Another way to legitimize disinformation was to format it as a video from a major media outlet’s social media, as most people wouldn’t go to verified pages of BBC, Deutsche Welle, or Al Jazeera to check if such content was published there.
Depending on the sophistication of the fake, more prominent speakers (from leading Russian TV channel hosts to deputies) and even major pro-government outlets may get involved in its dissemination: for example, the main state news agency RIA Novosti and the government’s official publication Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Since they at least occasionally strive to create the appearance of journalistic work, their employees cannot publish a news piece citing an anonymous reader from an anonymous Telegram channel, but “investigations” from fake websites with names resembling authoritative Western media are perfectly suitable.
At the stage of further dissemination, foreign retransmitters of Russian propaganda get involved. These include, for example, English-speaking bloggers such as Jackson Hinkle (2.8 million followers on X), Sprinter (around 600 thousand), and Aussie Cossack (currently blocked). The network of pro-Russian websites Pravda News, operating in various languages of the EU countries, also plays a role.
Every month, Russian propaganda generates hundreds of fake screenshots, videos, images, and other disinformation — and, as far as is known, this is usually not led by Solovyov or Simonyan, but by media managers such as Kristina Potupchik or Vladimir Tabak. The results of their work are disseminated through countless (mostly anonymous) Telegram channels with tens or even hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Many of these fake stories spread far beyond the Russian-speaking segment of social media, thanks to bots, pro-Kremlin bloggers—and ordinary internet users who do not bother to fact-check what they see on social networks. This is precisely what the organizers of disinformation campaigns rely on, counting on the low level of media literacy among residents of various countries around the world.
“Provereno.Media“ is a fact-checking platform founded by journalist Ilya Ber. The platform’s staff verify information, debunk fake news, analyze complex stories, and strive to present the results in a clear and accessible way. “Provereno.Media” is a member of the IFCN fact-checking association.
