What next address will Russian propaganda falsely attribute to Volodymyr Zelensky? 495 Grove Street in New York, also known as Monica, Rachel and Phoebe’s apartment? Villa Alma, in Mexico, which sheltered broken hearts? Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Ukrainian president has been attacked over his supposed real estate holdings abroad.
The latest round of attacks attributes to him – wrongly – the ownership of property that no one wants: the former villa of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda during the Third Reich. The building, still standing but falling into disrepair, was built in the late 1930s near Lake Bagensee. It is today the property of BIM, a company which manages the real estate of the land from Berlin.
This false accusation comes from YouTube. In a video posted on December 24, a woman who identified herself as Sabine Mels claimed that the president had acquired the Nazi leader’s former villa. Presenting herself as a former employee of BIM, she shows a document, which she says shows that the buyer is a company owned by Volodymyr Zelensky.
“This is completely false information. The land still belongs to land of Berlin,” explains a BIM spokesperson to 20 minutes, who adds that no woman named Sabine Mels has ever worked for their organization. Moreover, the property, which was for sale a few years ago, is no longer so: “With the change in the real estate policy of the land from Berlin, a sale is not on the agenda. We are in contact with the federal state, the municipality of Wandlitz and the land of Brandenburg and discuss possible development potentials for the entire site.
Each time, no evidence shows that the president bought the villa
Before this residence in Germany, Russian propaganda attributed luxurious villas to Volodymyr Zelensky all over the world, each time in places popular with the jet-set. Three months after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an obscure website registered in Tuvalu uses language from a former Ukrainian MP, who claims that Volodymyr Zelensky bought a villa in Miami for $34 million . Could the former actor be the neighbor of Booba and Jennifer Lopez? The assertion is a dead end: the American fact-checking site Snopes found no trace of such an acquisition. Our colleagues point out that the former Ukrainian MP was also stripped of his ability to write laws because he used elements of Russian propaganda.
Then, it was England which would have been favored by Volodymyr Zelensky according to several Russian sites, which attribute to the president and his wife the purchase of a superb mansion with tennis court and swimming pool in the countryside north of London . They claim that the couple is preparing to flee the country, an accusation which is repeated in the posts which accuse Volodymyr Zelensky of having bought the villa in Germany.
Sotheby’s realty, the real estate agency which is offering the sale of this 14-room English mansion, did not respond to requests from 20 minutes. However, the property is still for sale on their site, suggesting that no buyer has come forward to date.
An accusation ridiculed
New attacks against the Ukrainian president are coming in the summer of 2023, after almost a year and a half of war and while the Ukrainian army has launched a counter-offensive. This time, the Ukrainian president would have set his sights on the Côte d’Azur. In a tweet seen a million times and spotted by Nice morningLiz Churchill, an account which then had 270,000 subscribers, attacks American financial support for Ukraine by presenting the photo of a wealthy residence whose ownership she attributes to Volodymyr Zelensky.
The head of the local real estate agency that offered the house for sale described the rumor as “ridiculous” to our colleagues, explaining that the property had been withdrawn from sale due to several unfavorable factors. “We didn’t make any visits,” she concluded.
On
In August 2023, it was an anonymous person on YouTube who claimed that Volodymyr Zelensky’s mother-in-law bought a luxurious villa in Egypt. The anonymous person presents himself as an investigative journalist. Problem: there is no trace of this man online. A Nigerian newspaper has published a document believed to be the property contract. A proof which is not a proof, since we find the same prototype document on the site of a real estate agency, as we recalled then.
Finally, in December 2023, again: Volodymyr Zelensky is accused – without proof – of having bought a $20 million villa in Florida.
Accusations aimed at weakening Western support for Ukraine
All these accusations aim to build the image of a corrupt president, who seeks to flee his country at war. They also aim to weaken Western support for Ukraine, like Liz Churchill who parallels American aid and the so-called purchase of the villa on the Côte d’Azur, or the so-called Sabine Mels who pretends to outraged by this false purchase in the middle of war: “With all the countless corruption scandals surrounding Ukraine, I can’t help but think that the money transferred by Germany and our partners could be used for a such a vile and twisted purchase.”
The video falsely accusing Volodymyr Zelensky’s mother-in-law of having bought a villa in Egypt was taken up by François Asselineau, former presidential candidate in France, who also denounced the “embezzlement”. “French taxpayers can at least have the consolation of knowing more precisely what their money is used for, which Macron and Von der Leyen send by the billions to the neo-Nazi regime in kyiv,” he wrote.
Accusing Volodymyr Zelensky of having bought the former villa of Goebbels, a Nazi leader, is in line with the discourse of Russian leaders: Vladimir Putin justified the invasion of the country by his desire to “denazify” the country.
These accusations are also fueled by the revelations of Pandora papers. An investigation by a consortium of international journalists showed in 2021 that Volodymyr Zelensky had not declared certain financial arrangements involving companies based in tax havens. Thus, Volodymyr Zelensky is accused, in the video of the alleged Sabine Mels, of having bought the villa of Hitler’s former minister via the company Film Heritage, which appears in these Pandora papers.
The Ukrainian president built his fortune while he was an actor. In 2022, the Italian press revealed that his wife owned a villa in Tuscany, a property acquired in 2017 for 3.8 million euros, according to the Ukrainian investigative site Slidstvo.info. His wife Olena had also owned an apartment in Crimea since 2013. The property, put up for sale in 2019, was seized by the Russians and resold in October 2023, according to the Moscow Times.