Fact Check: Did Zelensky buy a $20 million dollar mansion in Florida?
The claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has purchased a $20 million residence in Florida has started flying around online again after his recent trip to the U.S. Capitol building. Zelensky met with members of Congress on Tuesday to enlist additional aid ahead of winter, when Russia is expected to target civilian infrastructure such as energy plants with an offensive that would force Ukrainians to conserve energy in cold weather.
The Biden administration has sent more than $75 billion in cash and equipment to Ukraine since the war began in February 2022, but Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young last week notified congressional leadership Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attends a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on September 28, 2023 in Kiev, Ukraine.
On Wednesday, a publication circulated on social media saying Zelensky had purchased a $20 million luxury villa in Florida. Lauren Witzke, an activist on the far right and Republican candidate for Delaware senator in 2020, reposted this statement calling on the U.S. to stop additional funding for Ukraine in the war against Russia. "Zelensky has sent Ukrainians to slaughter and drained the US treasury with no intention of staying in Ukraine and supporting his people. Instead, he plans to flee and retire to the beautiful beaches of Florida, where he is said to have bought a $20 million luxury villa," Witzke said." said Witzke. Her post with photos of the alleged property quickly racked up 9.1 million views and was re-shared by other popular conservative accounts such as Catturd, who said: "Please tell me this isn't true". Witzke's publication of Zelensky's alleged $20 million home in Vero Beach, Fla. Twitter.
This is not the first time such a statement about Zelensky has appeared. In April 2022, former Canadian politician Nicolas Tetrault accused Zelensky of embezzling Ukrainian aid on Facebook, claiming that the Ukrainian president owned 15 homes, including a $35 million house in Florida, and three private jets. The post has been deleted. According to a fact-check conducted by PolitiFact last year, the earliest mention of the allegation has to do with a post made the day before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, on EPrimeFeed, a website that only publishes posts from anonymous authors and appears to be affiliated with the Russian government.
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A reverse image search of the photos posted by Witzke leads to a property address on Pont Vedra Boulevard in Pont Vedra Beach, Florida. Public real estate records in St. Johns County show that this one-and-a-half acre home was last purchased in April 2019 for $6.3 million by a couple identified by Newsweek as owners of an independent Atlanta-based broker-dealer firm. A fresh appraisal puts the property's market value today at nearly $8 million. The same information can be found on real estate websites such as Zillow, Realtor.com and Redfin. Lacklen Markay, an investigative journalist formerly with Axios and The Daily Beast, also traced Witzke's claim to publication in DC Weekly, a website run by American conspiracy theorist John Mark Dugan, who fled Florida for Moscow in 2016. The DC Weekly post, which claimed that Zelensky had purchased a residence in Vero Beach, was written by "highly respected journalist" Jessica Devlin, but Markai noted that the image used on Devlin's author page actually belongs to a New York-based writer named Judy Batalion. Ukrainian state media previously reported that Devlin was using a photo of Batalion as his own.
False.While Zelensky and his business partners had several offshore companies and properties, none of those assets are in Florida, according to leaked financial documents in 2021. And the Florida home he claims to own is actually owned by a married couple who bought the property more than four years ago. FACT CHECK FROM Newsweek. Uncommon Knowledge. Newsweek seeks to evoke conventional wisdom and make connections in search of a common denominator. Newsweek seeks to evoke conventional wisdom and find connections in search of a common denominator.
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