Commentary: Reader Contest: Shop with Volodymyr Zelensky
Commentary: Reader Contest: Shop with Volodymyr Zelensky
In this Reality Check commentary, readers are invited to predict what purchases Russian disinformation will falsely claim the Ukrainian president made on his trip to the U.S.
Welcome to Reality Check, your inside look at how misinformation online is undermining trust — and who’s behind it.
Reader Contest: Shop with Volodymyr Zelensky
By Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard Co-CEO
This week’s trip to the U.S. by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky gives Reality Check readers the chance to match wits against the most skilled purveyors of Russian disinformation. Based on what we have seen from earlier trips by Zelensky outside Ukraine, Russian disinformation operatives will soon claim that he made significant purchases while in the U.S., thereby suggesting that he is corruptly using Western aid funds for his own benefit.
As a refresher, we recently wrote in a commentary headlined, “Where Zelensky Goes, That’s Where He Shops,” that McKenzie Sadeghi, NewsGuard’s editor for AI and foreign influence, noticed that pro-Russia outlets now regularly plant false claims of Zelensky’s supposed corruption following his travels to visit allies. For example, when Zelensky visited England, Russian websites claimed he had purchased a countryside estate from King Charles. And his wife was accused of buying a Bugatti car while visiting France.
Now that he is visiting the U.S., we invite you to suggest false Zelensky-shops-the-U.S. claims. We will then compare these with the false claims that emerge from Russian disinformation over coming weeks. Send your suggested false claims to realitycheck@newsguardtech.com, and we will share the best ones in a future Reality Check.
Here are some potential candidates to inspire you:
Zelensky visited Scranton, Pennsylvania, to see the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, which manufactures munitions. Maybe this will inspire the false claim that Zelensky bought Joe Biden’s birthplace in Scranton’s Green Ridge neighborhood, a modest three-story Colonial-style home on North Washington Avenue. This would likely sell for less than the $8 million Zelensky was falsely accused of spending on Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’ villa while visiting Germany.
Zelensky will be in New York City for the annual meeting of the General Assembly at the United Nations. This would be an ideal time for him to buy a penthouse apartment at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. (This one would add the twist of Zelensky buying something for himself and ingratiating himself with the possible next president at the same time.) Given the city’s high real estate prices, this could match the $81 million he was falsely accused of paying for the musician Sting’s winery in Tuscany after his trip to Italy.
Zelensky will go to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Maybe he’ll pick up one of the few original copies of the Constitution while he’s in town; one went for $43 million in 2021. Zelensky is also scheduled to meet with Donald Trump. Maybe he’ll be accused of buying one of the four memberships to Mar-a-Lago that Trump recently said would be available for $1 million each.
As you seek to match the work of Russian disinformation operatives, keep in mind John Mark Dougan as a main purveyor of these Zelensky claims. He crafted or spread many of the false claims about Zelensky’s free-wheeling spending. Dougan, who is a fugitive former Florida deputy sheriff now based in Moscow, uses the 171 websites he created to look like independent local news websites to spread this stuff.
The claims against Zelensky are brazen and easily refuted. But they are also effective. Rep. Michael Turner, the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said last spring that it was “absolutely true” that some members of Congress repeated Russian disinformation, including false claims about Zelensky corruption.
The good news is that together we can pre-bunk upcoming claims — though perhaps at the risk of adding to Dougan’s already considerable creative efforts.
Gordon Crovitz is the Co-CEO and Co-Editor-In-Chief of NewsGuard. Previously, he was publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
We launched Reality Check after seeing how much interest there is in our work beyond the business and tech communities that we serve. Subscribe to this newsletter to support our apolitical mission to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies. Have feedback? Send us an email: realitycheck@newsguardtech.com.