(November 14, 2025 at 7:43 am)Belacqua Wrote: Zelensky's corruption is no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention. It can't be dismissed as the fantasy of a conservative newspaper.
Zelenskyy has also been a target for Russian fake news—you know, the ones that you often fall for and spread on this forum.
Quote:Fact check: Russian fake news targets Ukraine's Zelenskyy
From lavish shopping sprees to luxury yachts, disinformation swirls around Ukraine's president. DW's Fact Check team investigates dubious claims that aim to weaken Western support for the country's ongoing war.
"Strategically, the West is still standing by Ukraine, but this year will be an important turning point, said Julia Smirnova from the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. A specialist in disinformation, she told DW that Russia was doing its best to undermine solidarity with Ukraine with fake news and propaganda.
The DW Fact Check team examined evidence that the Ukrainian president and his family have been the targets of anti-Ukrainian disinformation. There have been various false claims regarding their allegedly lavish lifestyle in recent months. DW looked at two in particular that went viral.
Did Zelenskyy buy two luxury boats worth several million dollars?
DW fact check: False
This allegation, which is particularly popular in the US, implies that Zelenskyy has not been using US aid to defend Ukraine against Russia but to live "an extravagant lifestyle." One tweet posted in November to make this claim was viewed more than 4 million times, yet it was clearly disinformation.
However, it must be noted that there have been credible allegations of corruption involving Zelenskyy and Serhiy Shefir. In the Pandora Papers, an international team of journalists revealed that Zelenskyy had sold a stake in an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands to Shefir not long before becoming president in 2019. Neither has ever commented publicly on the allegations.
Did Olena Zelenska buy $1.1 million worth of jewelry in New York?
Claim: According to an online article and various social media posts, Zelenskyy's wife spent $1,100,000 on a shopping spree in New York when she accompanied her husband to the US to secure continued support from Washington.
DW fact check: False
The Washington Post recently reported that it had reviewed over 100 internal Kremlin documents obtained by a European intelligence service and shared with the US daily, which "expose for the first time the scale of Kremlin propaganda targeting Zelenskyy with the aim of dividing and destabilizing Ukrainian society."
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-russian...a-68346906
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
