Social media posts allege that Zelensky and his wife have spent millions on luxury items (Photo credit: … [+]
While Americans are struggling to buy groceries, First Lady Olena Zelenshka has been making headlines this week after posting on social media that she recently spent millions on a Bugatti sports car. This follows earlier online claims that the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took a shopping trip to Paris in December 2022, where the Ukrainian first lady spent $42,500 on designer clothes and accessories.
These claims are just the latest in an ongoing misinformation/disinformation campaign that seeks to question why the United States is providing military aid to Ukraine.
Look at your sales receipts, it must be real!
The dubious claims this week reportedly began with a report by the French-language website Verité Cachée (Hidden Truth), which reported that the Ukrainian president and his wife were given a private presentation of the vehicle during a visit to France in early June for the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings.
The site also published a so-called invoice and video with Jacques Bertin, an employee of a Bugatti dealership in Paris, who is said to have sold the car to Olena Zelenska for €4.4 million. The video was later revealed to be a deepfake, and the receipt was also said to be fake, containing typos and missing information such as value-added tax (VAT), which is common in such sales.
“Russian propaganda sources have falsely claimed that Olena Zelenska purchased a Bugatti Tourbillon for 4.5 million euros,” the Counter Disinformation Center post said.
But even if users add context and the story is widely debunked, many still accept it as fact.
“The prevalence of obviously false news is a phenomenon driven by biases among various sectors of society. The opinions of many prominent figures, be they politicians, celebrities or even certain demographics, are already somewhat entrenched in the minds of many people and these opinions have become even more extreme in recent years,” warned Joe Karasin, social media marketing expert at Karasin PPC.
To make matters worse, many of the prominent users sharing this misinformation are increasingly becoming trusted sources of information.
“Social media celebrities certainly share this kind of information, but it's a bit unclear whether they do it to gain new followers or simply endear themselves to their existing ones,” Karasin said. “Figures like Alex Jones and Ben Shapiro have built powerful followings by sharing misinformation, but so did radio host Rush Limbaugh 30 years ago.”
Social media has simply amplified the ability to spread misinformation.
“The phenomenon of misinformation and disinformation on social media is thriving not only due to cognitive biases but also due to nuances in narrative psychology. Humans are inherently drawn to stories, particularly those that evoke strong emotions or confirm our worldview,” added Jason Levin, founder of social media strategy provider CyberPatterns.
The appeal of this narrative often obscures the need for factual accuracy, making even outlandish misinformation, including recent claims about Ukraine's leadership, plausible and shareable.
“The unexpected element here is the role of modern folklore,” Levin suggests. “Just as folklore in traditional societies explained the inexplicable or taught moral lessons through stories, modern misinformation often serves a similar social function: binding communities together through shared belief or disbelief, even in the absence of truth.”
Refuse to check what you read
Without giving the reader any context, it is easy to expose this story as fake. Simply checking trusted news outlets will prove such stories to be false. However, several factors contribute to the psychological appeal and success of propaganda, including disinformation campaigns.
“Ironically, the simpler the message, the more likely the propaganda is to be picked up and spread – without the need for detailed explanation or verification,” said Irina Zukerman, president of Scarab Rising and a geopolitical analyst specializing in information warfare. “Cognitive and confirmation biases play a big role in spreading disinformation. In this case, the audience the message is aimed at tends to already be skeptical of governments in general and U.S. support for Ukraine in particular.”
Moreover, this message is based on previous assertions that Zelensky is independently wealthy due to his success as an actor, and from that it is not a leap of the imagination to believe that successful people are extravagant, addicted to luxuries, and generally corrupt and unprincipled.
“Furthermore, past stories accusing Mrs. Zelensky of engaging in corrupt activities, such as expensive shopping trips, when combined with other stories about U.S. aid being misused, create a seemingly logical chain that is easy for citizens to believe, even if neither part of the chain has been verified,” Zuckerman said. “The success of this approach has been tried and tested again and again, yet the irony is that the same types of people continue to be fooled by the same types of messaging again and again, despite being debunked time and time again.”
Who do you trust?
Another consideration is that these posts are often accompanied by a claim that the news has been ignored by the mainstream media, which may make the news more credible for some people. Some users have become “trusted sources” on social media by posting news that they claim has been ignored or deliberately hidden.
“Today, there are a huge number of sources of information online, from new age blogs to fake social media accounts, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish what is real from what is fabricated,” he said.
“The ease with which anyone can purchase a verified badge today has further exacerbated confusion and undermined a symbol that was once thought to indicate a trustworthy source of information,” said Melanie Pankat, a spokeswoman for Otter Public Relations.
This information saturation and blurring of indicators of reliability only complicates efforts to discern the truth today.
“It's not uncommon these days for well-known users seeking to gain followers or attention to explicitly or implicitly acknowledge that misinformation is based on sensationalism or ideological alignment,” Pankat said.
The danger is that it is not just a minority who are guilty of spreading misinformation while masquerading as truth-tellers.
“It's a double-edged sword. Even highly intelligent, public figures like Elon Musk occasionally share stories that are obviously false to create sensation and make headlines,” Karasin explains. “And in our social media culture, it's a badge of honor to 'share news that the mainstream media ignores,' giving the sharer the impression that they're an insider, that they're not 'smart' enough to be fooled by lies, which inflates the ego of their followers who are also 'too smart.' By pleasing their audience in this way, these celebrities cement their relationship with them and help spread false narratives.”
