Did Zelensky's wife spend millions on new Bugatti supercar? (2024)

Over the course of the war started by Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska have been subject to reports debunked by Newsweek that Ukraine's first couple were engaged in corruption.

In December 2022, social media users reported that during a visit to Paris, the Ukrainian first lady undertook an expensive shopping trip in which she splashed out $42,500, a claim that was debunked.

Other allegations also refuted in Newsweek Fact Checks include the Ukrainian president building a property portfolio spanning the U.S., Italy, the U.K. and France and even the first lady purchasing a private island.

There is a French connection to the latest wild claims circulating on social media about the president's wife—this time related to a luxury car worth millions.

The Claim

Verité Cachée, (Hidden Truth) a French-language website carried the article headlined "Olena Zelenska became the first owner of the all-new Bugatti Tourbillon."

The report alleges that Zelenska and Volodymyr Zelensky had been given a private presentation of the vehicle by Bugatti during their visit to France last month for the 75th-anniversary commemorations of the D-Day Normandy landings.

The report said that Zelenska was "impressed" with the new car and placed an order to become an owner of one of the first of 250 cars planned for production.

The publication posted what is said was a copy of the invoice for the new car which would be available in 2026 at a price tag of 4.5 million euros ($4.8 million).

The Facts

The French website carried a video of what it said was Jacques Bertin, an employee of the Bugatti dealership in Paris, which was amplified by other questionable websites and X user 'Aussie Cossack.'

However, the community posts that allow X users to add context to a post wrote that the video was a deepfake, reinforcing doubt about the realism of the talking protagonist as well as the purported invoice.

"This video is a deepfake video. This guy is not real and this was never said," the community post said. "The website that is linked literally still has parts describing what should be put there along with the fake news." It also described 'Aussie Cossack' as Simeon Boikov, who "is a known Kremlin propagandist."

Kyle Glen, from the Center for Information Resilience, which counters disinformation, wrote on X that "the video is obviously AI generated but that's not the best thing about this ludicrous claim."

"The operators of the website are so lazy that they haven't even removed the instructions from their Russian handlers," he wrote, noting at the top of an article about a new drone used by Ukraine, "it tells them what is "good" (Trump, Russia) and what is bad (war in Ukraine, pharma."

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, said in a thread on X that the French website had only been created on June 22, 2024, and contained pro-Russian articles about the war in Ukraine.

It also said the person claiming to be an employee at the Bugatti outlet had only four posts on Instagram, "with the first post published just 4 days ago. It's also worth noting that the man in the video shows signs of an artificially generated deepfake.

"Russian propagandists launched this fake before the NATO summit in order to discredit Ukraine's top leadership in the international arena," the thread added.

The Ruling

False.

FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK

The claim that Ukraine's first lady Olena Zelenska had spent millions on a luxury car appeared on a website that a Ukrainian disinformation watchdog said had only been set up days earlier.

A video purportedly showing a Bugatti employee describing the deal has been widely rejected by social media users and analysts as AI-generated while X accounts noted how the claims were amplified by a user who is described as a "Kremlin propagandist."

Zelensky has made public pronouncements against corruption in Ukraine, especially given the sensitivity of Kyiv's ongoing requests for Western aid to fight Russian aggression, and so attempts to undermine those calls would suit the Kremlin's aims.

Cybernews.com described the video as part of a "carefully crafted propaganda campaign, most likely of Russian origin" to discredit Ukraine and help end further international support. It also noted how upcoming NATO summit and the Olympics in Paris "are also expected to be heavily targeted with propaganda campaigns and cyberattacks."