Fact Checking Claims That Volodymyr Zelensky Bought a $20 Million Florida Mansion
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had other reasons for his most recent trip to the United States besides seeking more assistance in his country’s war against Russian aggression, according to various social media posts across Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. The posts claim that Zelensky purchased a $20 million oceanside mansion in Vero Beach, Florida. Some even claim he also became a U.S. citizen.
No evidence exists that Zelensky has purchased a property in Florida, however, and the home pictured is owned by an unrelated individual.
The post uses images from a property at 1263 Ponte Vedra Blvd. in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, which is currently listed for sale for $10.9 million by the realty group Compass. Built in 1995, the home most recently sold on April 16, 2019, for $6.3 million to the CEO of an Atlanta, Georgia-based financial services firm that filed for bankruptcy in 2022.
A listing agent at Compass confirmed to The Dispatch Fact Check that the home has not been purchased and remains an active listing.
Lauren Witzke, the Republican Senate nominee from Delaware in 2020 who lost to Sen. Chris Coons, and others also posted a photo purportedly of Zelensky’s U.S. Certificate of Naturalization. The certificate lacks a number of details—spaces in the registration number, a seal by the photo, and the holder’s signature—that verified documents of the same kind typically include.
A satirical trend of posts reporting Zelensky’s purchase of famous landmarks around the world exploded after the circulation of the original false story, with social media users humorously accusing the Ukrainian president of also acquiring for $20 million the Sydney Opera House, Tower of London, Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, and even a home in the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s fictional capital of Solitude.
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