Has Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife Olena Zelenska become the first owner of a $4.8 million Bugatti Tourbillon? Is this Kremlin’s AI propaganda? | Today’s news

Discussion about a luxury car allegedly bought by Olena Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has added a new twist to the series of corruption allegations against the couple.

The latest allegation came from a French website that posted an invoice for the purchase of a Bugatti tourbillon. However, fact-checkers have identified the video supporting the claim as a deepfake, linked to well-known Kremlin propagandists.

In December 2022, reports swept social media that during a trip to Paris, Zelenska went on a shopping spree, spending $42,500. Newsweek Later investigations refuted these reports.

President Zelensky was also accused of amassing a portfolio of properties in the US, Italy, the UK and France, and it was even claimed that the First Lady had purchased a private island. According to the report, this too was proven to be false.

The French-language website, Vérité cachée (“Hidden Truth”), published an article titled “Olena Zelenska becomes first owner of brand new Bugatti Tourbillon.” The report alleged that during his recent trip to France to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day Normandy landings, Zelensky received a personal gift of the vehicle from Bugatti.

The article claimed that Olena Zelenska was “impressed” by the car and ordered one of the first 250 cars planned for production, costing 4.5 million euros ($4.8 million). The publication also claimed to have a copy of the invoice for the car, which will be available in 2026.

Fact Check

The French website showed a video that allegedly showed Jacques Bertin, an employee at a Bugatti dealership in Paris. However, this video was amplified by other dubious websites and by the pro-Putin YouTuber and commentator X User ‘Australian Cossack’.

A post on X described the video as a deepfake, casting doubt on the authenticity of both the speaker and the invoice. “This video is a deepfake video. This man is not real and has never said so,” the post said. It also described the ‘Australian Cossack’ as Semyon Boikov, “a well-known Kremlin propagandist.”

Kyle Glenn of the Center for Information Resilience, an organization that combats misinformation, commented on X that “this video is clearly produced by AI, but that’s not the best thing about this ridiculous claim.”

“The website’s operators are so lazy they haven’t even removed the instructions they received from their Russian handlers,” Glenn said, pointing to explicit instructions in an article about a new Ukrainian drone that clearly showed a bias in favor of Trump and Russia, while opposing the war in Ukraine and pharmaceutical companies.

The Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation also commented on this, saying that the French website was created only on June 22, 2024, and contained pro-Russian articles about the war in Ukraine. They highlighted that the alleged Bugatti employee had only four posts on Instagram, the first of which was published just a few days before the claim surfaced. According to a report, signs of artificial content creation were evident in the video. Newsweek Report.

“Russian propagandists spread this fake news ahead of the NATO summit to discredit Ukraine’s top leadership in the international arena,” the Ukrainian Center said.

A claim that Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska spent millions on a luxury car was published on a website, which Ukrainian disinformation watchdogs have flagged as a newly founded claim.

Cybernews.com described the video as “part of a carefully crafted propaganda campaign, most likely of Russian origin”, aimed at discrediting Ukraine and undermining international support. The site also warned of possible propaganda campaigns and cyber attacks targeting the upcoming NATO summit and the Paris Olympics.