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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met in Paris in early June with U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron, seeking their continued support for his country’s war against Russia.
Some social media users, however, said Ukraine has other designs for some of the aid money coming its way: a luxury French sports car for the first lady.
“President Zelenskyy’s wife orders 4 million dollar Bugatti. Thank you American taxpayers,” read sticker text on a photo of an invoice shared in a July 1 Instagram post.
The invoice shown in the Instagram post is to “Mrs. Olena Zelenska” for a preorder of a Bugatti Tourbillon with a total price of nearly $4.5 million.
The Tourbillon is a new car by the luxury automaker that will cost more than $4 million and won’t be delivered to customers until 2026. But the invoice in the Instagram post isn’t real.
Nicole Auger, a Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. spokesperson, told PolitiFact in an email that “Mrs. Zelenska is not a Bugatti customer.” Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, part of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said in a thread on X that the claim is Russian disinformation that started in a French publication, Verite Cachee — which translated to English means “Hidden Truth.”
(Instagram post)
Ever since the U.S. began sending financial aid to Ukraine after the February 2022 Russian invasion, social media has been rife with claims that Zelenskyy and Zelenska have been using American tax dollars to fund a lavish lifestyle.
Among previous claims PolitiFact has debunked: Zelenskyy used American tax dollars to buy two yachts for $75 million (False); his net worth is $596 million (False); and that he bought a $35 million home in Florida (False).
Auger said Bugatti normally doesn’t disclose information about its customers, but it knew about reports that Zelenska bought one of its vehicles. This time, she said, Bugatti is making “an exception because it is a false report.”
Bugatti Paris, the official Bugatti partner in France, said in a statement posted July 1 on Instagram that the invoice was bogus and contained multiple errors, including the car’s price, according to Meta’s translation of the post.
The statement was from the Car Lovers Group, which owns Autofficina Parigi, the company that operates the Bugatti Paris dealership. The Car Lovers Group issued the same statement in a press release posted July 1 on its website. It said the company has filed a criminal complaint.
The statement referred to a video from a supposed Bugatti employee that was included in the Verite Cachee article and also shared separately in other social media posts. Analysts told CNN that the video has the markings of a deepfake, such as cuts in the video and strange mouth movements. The Center for Countering Disinformation also suggested it was generated with artificial intelligence.
The Verite Cachee website was created June 22 and many of the site’s headlines are incomplete, with words such as “Here is a short title for the article,” according to a Google translation.
One article on the website about the Russia-Ukraine war appears to leave instructions on how to write the article with a pro-Russian slant.
“Here are some things to keep in mind for context. Republicans, Trump, DeSantis, and Russia are good, while Democrats, Biden, the war in Ukraine, big business, and pharma are bad. Feel free to add additional information on the topic as needed,” the article’s first paragraph said.
The Center for Countering Disinformation said “Russian propagandists launched this fake before the NATO summit in order to discredit Ukraine’s top leadership in the international arena.” The NATO summit begins July 9 in Washington, D.C.
An Olena Zelenska Foundation spokesperson referred us to the X thread posted by the Center for Countering Disinformation.
The claim that Ukraine’s first lady bought a $4 million sports car while visiting Paris with her husband is False.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check.
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