A series of fake publications about President Volodymyr Zelensky's alleged multi-million dollar purchases — including a hotel with a casino in Northern Cyprus, a winery in Tuscany that belonged to a famous British musician, and a brand new Bugatti for Ukraine’s First Lady — has been updated with an unbelievable new addition: the story that Zelensky has ostensibly purchased Adolf Hitler's parade car and drives it around Kyiv. The Russian tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets ”reports”:
“Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has purchased a car that belonged to Adolf Hitler. The Nazi Fuhrer rode in this Mercedes at the parade in Berlin after the surrender of France in 1940. The purchase was reported by Seattle Tribune.
“As the publication writes, the car was noticed in the center of Kyiv in early October. It had brought Zelensky to the administration building on Bankova Street. This happened shortly after Zelensky returned from his American tour.
“The article says that the amount Zelensky paid for the Mercedes-Benz 770k is unknown, but experts estimate its value as approximately $15 million. The Nazi dictator's car was confiscated by the U.S. Army after the war ended.”
Argumenty i Fakty throws in some details:
“The United States attempted to auction the car in 2018. The endeavor failed because the $7 million bid fell short of the expected value. Subsequently, representatives stated they were negotiating the sale of the car with a client outside the U.S.”
The failed 2018 auction story is true — except that the negotiations did in fact end in February 2022, with the car being purchased by Australian national Clive Palmer for his future car museum. According to The Times, its previous owner was a Russian tycoon who had bought the car for more than $7 million. However, after Palmer was suspected in Australia of violating the anti-Russian sanctions regime and glorifying Nazism, he denied the purchase.
Seattle Tribune, which first wrote about Zelensky's purchase of the car, is one of many fake publications created to plant dirt against Putin’s enemies. Olena Zelenska's fictional purchase of a Bugatti was reported by the non-existent French publication Vérité Cachée in July 2024 using a similar method. The website of Seattle Tribune was registered just a few days ago, and the Internet Archive shows that on Oct. 3, 2024, it was completely empty.
The pseudo-American publication presents a screenshot ostensibly captured from the Ukrainian Telegram channel “Real War | Ukraine | News” with a photo of a car outside the Ukrainian president's office building.
Of course, the channel published no such post, and the image itself was doctored. The car was cut from a photo that illustrated the auction announcements on various websites in 2017.
As we can see, tree reflections in the fenders of the car in the two images match — and there are no trees this big anywhere near the building on Bankova Street. The authors of the hoax only tried to blur the reflection of the American police car in the door, and they weren't too thorough about it, leaving visible traces of the partially erased reflection. The license plates are blurred too — an understandable move for the original 2017 photo, when the car belonged to a private owner — but why would one care to hide the license plates of a presidential car that Zelensky purportedly uses to get to his office and drive around Kyiv?