Fact-Checking False Claims Against President Zelensky

It is typical fare for Russian bots and lapdog media, not to mention useful idiots in the West, to smear Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. One lie often spread is that he is a corrupt billionaire who owns a luxury villa in Florida.

Those claims reached a crescendo shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and they surfaced again prior to Zelenski’s being ambushed by the portly U.S. president and his sycophants at a meeting in the White House on February 28.

Manlio Dinucci’s false claims

These social media smears do make the rounds. I received a message recently from an acquaintance referring to an article by someone named Manlio Dinucci. He claims that Zelensky is corrupt and rich, and that he owns a string of “luxurious villas,” including one in Miami worth $34 million.

I should mention that Dinucci’s articles are picked up by The Centre for Research on Globalization. The CRG is Montreal-based and well known in research circles as an outlet that spews propaganda on behalf of Russia and several other authoritarian regimes. Dinucci’s claims are easily proven to be false.

Forbes fact-checks Zelensky’s assets

The first article that I read is from the American business magazine Forbes. The author is Matt Durot. The magazine describes him as “a senior reporter who covers the world’s wealthiest people with a focus on their businesses, philanthropy and political spending.”

Durot wrote, “Internet sleuths, or more likely Russian propagandists, have credited Zelensky with owning as many as five luxury yachts and three private jets, in addition to $60 million of shares in companies like Saudi Aramco, Meta and Tesla. Forbes found no evidence of such a fleet, and if Zelensky does own stock in those companies it’s hard to believe those shares would be worth anywhere close to $60 million.”

Durot estimated Zelensky’s net worth at less than $30 million.

Zelinsky’s wealth is modest

Zelensky was a popular celebrity on Ukrainian television prior to going into politics. He also has a law degree, although he never practiced. Durot said that Zelensky made his money in television. “His main asset: an estimated 25% stake in Kvartal 95, a group of companies that produce humorous shows, which he transferred to his partners after being elected president, though he’ll likely regain his shares after leaving office.” Forbes places Zelensky’s net worth at $11 million.

Durot said that Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska own a flat in one of Ukraine’s most expensive apartment buildings in the center of Kyiv, but that it is “relatively modest” by Western standards. Forbes estimates Zelensky’s entire real estate portfolio is worth $4 million, including two more other wholly owned apartments, two that he co-owns, a single commercial property, and five parking spaces. Durot says, as well, that Zelensky did own some property in Italy and in Georgia, but that he sold it in 2020.

Newsweek fact-check on Florida mansion

While Forbes, dealt with the lies about Zelensky’s net worth, Newsweek magazine investigated the lie about a Florida mansion.

On March 1, 2025, Newsweek reporter Katherine Fung wrote about renewed Internet activity regarding Zelensky while he was in the U.S. for his ill-fated meeting with the president. She wrote: “A claim alleging that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky purchased a $20 million mansion in Vero Beach, Florida is recirculating online again amid his recent trip to the U.S. Capitol.”

Republican lies about Zelensky

Fung wrote that Lauren Witzke, a far-right activist and the 2020 Republican Senate nominee for Delaware, “recirculated the claim about Zelensky purchasing a Florida mansion . . . while calling on the U.S. to ‘CUT OFF UKRAINE’ from additional funding for the war against Russia.”

Fung cited fact-checking from a publication called PolitiFact showing that the earliest mention of the Florida mansion “stems from a post that was made a day before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 on the website EPrimeFeed, which only publishes posts from anonymous authors and appears to have ties to the Russian government. PolitiFact concluded the claims were false.”

Fung then checked on photos that Lauren Witzke claimed were of a Florida mansion owned by Zelensky.  Fund writes: “A reverse image search of the photos shared by Witzke pulls up a property address on Ponte Vedra Boulevard in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Public property records from St. Johns County show that the one-and-a-half-acre home was last purchased April 2019 for $6.3 million by a couple that Newsweek identified to be the owners of an Atlanta-based independent broker-dealer firm.”

In other words, the photo used by Witzke was of a Florida home with American owners. Witzke’s claim was maliciously fake.

Trump, Putin and the big lie

The audacity of these lies is stunning, although they should not be surprising. President Trump lies multiple times a day. As for Vladimir Putin, when he sent fighters in non-descript green fatigues to invade Crimea in 2014, he insisted that they were not Russians.

What makes the false claims about Zelensky’s alleged corruption additionally bizarre, is that Putin, whose salary is nominally about $140,000 a year, is likely one of the richest men in the world. No one can prove it, which is testimony to how cleverly he uses myriads of shell companies and the assistance of Russian oligarchs to hide his stolen wealth.

The acclaimed French economist Thomas Piketty said in an interview that, “Putin’s regime is really a kleptocratic one, we’ve never seen something like that in the modern economy. “Piketty crunches numbers to say show that Russian oligarchs have stolen up to €2 trillion of oil and gas revenues from the country since the year 2000, and that much of that money has been invested in Western countries, whose sanctions against the oligarchs remain weak.

So, it’s Putin who is corrupt, but Zelensky who gets falsely accused. Welcome to the world of the big lie. Let’s call it out.