- “Zelensky’s mother-in-law just bought a luxury villa on the shores of the Red Sea for $5 million,” former presidential candidate François Asselineau wrote in a tweet that has been viewed more than 600,000 times.
- It is based on a now offline YouTube video that provides no evidence.
- Volodymyr Zelensky and his relatives are regularly attacked because they are accused of abusing war support from Western states.
This is a recurring theme of anti-Ukrainian propaganda: Volodymyr Zelensky and his relatives supposedly own luxurious villas around the world. In 2022, the Ukrainian president was falsely accused of purchasing a five million dollar home in Florida. This summer, Internet users accused the head of state of buying a villa on the Côte d’Azur. A rumor denied by the real estate agency responsible for the sale to our colleagues in Nice Matin.
This time the president’s family is said to have made a magnificent purchase in Egypt. In a tweet viewed more than 600,000 times, François Asselineau, the president of the UPR, claims that “Zelensky’s mother-in-law just bought a $5 million luxury villa on the edge of the Red Sea.” It’s not just the president’s family who would be worried: “Local real estate agents told the press that since the summer of 2022, they have witnessed a parade of Ukrainian heads of state and government, all of whom are treating themselves to Hollywood mansions worth millions of dollars.” » François Asselineau, who has already passed on unfounded information, then denounces “corruption” and “embezzlement”. “French taxpayers can at least have the comfort of knowing more precisely how their money, which Macron and Von der Leyen send billions to the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, is used for,” he concludes. The accusation was also picked up by several blogs.
FAKE OFF
François Asselineau refers to a video shared on YouTube in which a man who introduces himself as investigative journalist Mohammed Al-Alawi claims that Olha Kiyashko, the mother-in-law of the Ukrainian president, bought a luxurious house in the famous seaside resort of El Gouna, Egypt . In the video, the man claims to have obtained documents about the real estate transaction, but he does not present them on screen. The video is no longer available because the associated YouTube account was closed on Tuesday.
What is striking, however, is the video: no Egyptian investigative journalist appears under this name outside of this YouTube account. Only this video, which lasts less than two minutes, was published on this account, which was only active this month. The man provides no evidence to support his claims. Punch, a Nigerian newspaper, then published documents on August 22 purporting to prove the transaction was true. However, the same prototype document can be found online on the website of a real estate agency that sells properties in another Egyptian seaside resort. The Ukrainian embassy in Egypt also denied this to the Egyptian website Cairo24 and regretted “Russian propaganda”.
Volodymyr Zelensky and his relatives are regularly attacked because they are accused of abusing war support from Western states. The Ukrainian president is also under attack for the fortune he built as an actor. In 2022, the Italian press reported that his wife owned a villa in Italy. According to the Ukrainian investigative site Slidstvo.info, the property was purchased in 2017 for 3.8 million euros.