Russian propaganda spreads fake about Zelensky's purchase of royal mansion in Britain

On March 31, the English-language YouTube channel Sam Murphy (284 subscribers - ed.) posted a video claiming that President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky had allegedly purchased the Highgrove House mansion, formerly owned by King Charles III of the United Kingdom, for 20 million pounds. The video's author refers to six former mansion employees, who were dismissed after the change of owner, as well as Grant Harrold, the former butler to Charles III (2004-2011). Later, the video's information was shared on the English-language website London Crier. Russian media and Telegram channels then reposted it, referring to the allegedly British newspaper.

This is a fake. There is no information in the British media about Zelensky's purchase of the mansion, and there are no official statements on the matter. The YouTube channel where the fake was published was created on February 5, 2024. There are only three videos on the channel, all of which are related to the royal family and were uploaded on March 31. The videos feature different voices. In the video about Zelensky, the speaker's pace is slower and the pronunciation is clearer. This confirms the video's focus on foreign consumers.

The website that reposted the video also turned out to be a fake. A domain checker service revealed that the domain was registered on March 26, 2024. It does not contain any information about the activities and owners. Instead of the names of journalists, materials are published under nicknames such as dennis.marshall10, alberto.young5. The site contains pro-Russian content. The "authors" likely simply copy materials from Russian Internet resources, as the site also contains news in Russian, which they probably forgot to translate.

The site contains links to social networks that lead to the resources of a software development company, where, among other things, a template site for own use can be purchased.

Dmytro Badrak